The Sleeping Sickness
by EnigmaticPenguin
Summary: An epidemic is sweeping the Ghost Zone, giving everyone's favorite ghost boy some time off. Until he comes down with the dreaded disease himself, and must work to find a cure. Before it is too late...
1. Prologue: All in good Time

6/22: Hey, whether you happen to be rereading this or just checking it out for the first time. I realized I needed to get around to writing that sequel I promised, so I reread this to see where everything's at and decided to run through and clean it up a bit. Just a few error checks and stuff, nothing major, but hey. I also got rid of all my author notes, whether for better or for worse. They really do get a bit long. -_grimaces_-

I edited all these at two in the morning, as opposed to the one in the morning when I originally came up with the brilliant idea. Funny how that works out, huh?

Oh, yeah, I mopped up the disclaimers, too. Now there's only one at the beginning here (below) that applies to the whole work of fanfiction.

Disclaimer: Danny Phantom is the property of Nickelodeon and was created by Butch Hartman.

* * *

**Prologue:  
All in good Time**

* * *

There is a place in the Ghost Zone where time is both nothing and everything. A place where it is always past, present, and future at the same time.

This place is very difficult to reach. It is said that the only way to get there is to bear a medallion, a very special medallion that allows the bearer to warp time itself,one thatexempts the wearer from the limitations of the so-called time stream.

Few know of the place. Of people, there are enough to count on one hand. Of ghosts, there are hardly any more. But it exists, as much as anything else ever does.

This timeless place is the abode of a particular ghost. He is the Master of Time, and he is called Clockwork.

On this particular yesterday, today, and tomorrow, though, Clockwork had two visitors. They were the Observants, the Watchers, by name and by nature.

Clockwork was (is, and will be) looking through aportal of sorts.This windowallowed the one who peered through it to look through Time at will.

Apparently, what the ghost saw wasn't to his pleasing. He closed his eyes, shook his head, and grasped tighter upon the staff he carried.

"You see? The events the Council had sought to defeat are passing yet again. Do you understand what must be done?"

The speaker was one of the Observants. Clockwork was not over-fond of either of the pair; their know-it-all, mysterious attitude often grew tiring.

"I see. And I understand. A lot more than you do, I'm sure," the ghost said irritably.

"Then you realize what must be done; why are you not doing so?" the other Observant put in.

"I have been charged--by you two, in fact--with the safety of the boy. Would you have me break that oath?"

"He will suffer no matter what. Would it not be best to end all troubles before they begin?" the first Observant answered.

"My brother is right. The good of the many outweigh the good of the few, correct?" the second Observant added.

"That is an ethical question. And it is beside the point." The young ancient ghost sighed wearily. "I will do what I can, and what I must, to prevent this. All in good time."

The Observants knew defeat when they saw it, and vanished into thin air. Clockwork shook his head sadly and returned to staring at the Window of Time, his frown deepening as he watched, watches, and will watch.

* * *

Far from that place in the Ghost Zone was yet another place, one perhaps even scarier to its inhabitants. The place was an old brick building, a school known as Casper High. 

Time was very important inside this structure, too, although perhaps in a different way. The several hundred students that attended the school were all staring at the clocks inside of the classrooms, watching as the minute hand clicked closer to two-thirty.

Of these students, Daniel Fenton was no exception.

Daniel--or Danny, as he was known--was a freshman at the high school. His hair was very untidy, and looked as though he often traveled at high speeds in a convertible. Peeking out from beneath the dark bangs were a pair of bright blue eyes. His nose was small and pointed, his complexion was pale, and his mouth wore something of a secretive smile. His clothes were simple: a casual, loose white shirt--red at the sleeves and collar, traditional jeans, and red-and-white sneakers.

All in all, Danny Fenton was a normal fourteen-year-old boy. He was, perhaps, a bit shy. And although he wasn't exactly the most intelligent, he still managed to scrape a C-average, and could have easily accomplished B's, or maybe even the odd A (except, perhaps, in math) if he studied just a bit harder. He had friends, of course. Tucker Foley and Samantha Manson had been his best friends since... Well, since before he could remember. Tucker was the excitable, talkative tecno-geek. Sam (who hated being called Samantha) was the independent, ultra-recyclo-vegetarian Goth girl.

Three, two, one...

_RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!_

With an almost earsplitting sound, the bell dismissed the students. There was a mad scramble to gather books and a lot of shoving at the door, but eventually the class had filed out and were at lockers, with much rustling of papers and slamming of doors, mixing with the gossip and chatter to create a meaningless babble in the hallway.

Danny slammed his locker door shut and turned around to face his two friends.

"Friday at last!"

"I've got it all planned out!" Tucker explained as they walked out of the school, flourishing his PDA (which Danny suspected he slept with). "We go to the movie theater first and watch that zombie movie that just came out. Then we spend the night at someone's house--I vote Sam's; she's got a bowling alley!--and tomorrow we spend all day at the amusement park. Then on Sunday, we-"

Sam placed her hand over Tucker's mouth to stop him from chattering.

"You talk too much for your own good, you realize that?" she said angrily.

"Don't worry, Tuck, I'm sure there'll be plenty of time for all that this weekend," Danny reassured his friend. "We'll-"

But he suddenly stopped, both in speaking and in walking, as he exhaled a visible stream of blue breath.

"On second thought, we'll do movies _after_ I finish this," he called, dashing behind a tree. "I'm going ghost!"

A bright blue ring appeared around his middle. It split in two, one halftraveling upward andthe otherdownward over his body, each leaving in their wake a very different person.

White hair, green eyes, and a black-and-white suite with aparticular D-shapedlogo proclaimed his new identity.

Danny Fenton might be normal. Danny Phantom, however, was a different matter.

Danny was half ghost, and had been that way since an ill-fated laboratory accident left his parents with a functional Ghost Portal, and himself with ghost powers.

The ghost-boy jumped into the air, and stayed there, as his ability of flight overpowered the force of gravity.

"All right," he proclaimed to no one in particular, "now to find that ghost!"

* * *

(Reviews are still loved, even if it's been six months since I completed this ;))

-E.P.


	2. Chapter 1: Coughing fit

**Chapter 1:  
Coughing fit**

* * *

Danny heard the shrill scream from behind him, and just a little to his right. It was followed by an even more shrill shriek, one that obviously belonged to someone else.Heturned quickly on his heel--quite the feat considering the fact that he was hovering above the ground--and sped off in the direction of the two screams. He didn't have far to travel.

Ahead of himwas a large shape, colored more of an indigo than a purple. The shape was all fur and feathers, with two immense wings folded above its long, twisty tail, which was tufted at the tip with a clump of furry violet.

The creature's back was turned, so those were the only recognizable body parts. Cowering against a large oak tree were two young hazel-eyed and freckled children. The oldest, a brown-haired girl, looked to be about ten or so. The younger blonde boy, who was probably a younger brother of the girl, was about seven. It was clear that it was they who had screamed.

The winged ghost raised its four-clawed paw, each talon as long as a butter knife, and swiped at the children.

Danny moved fast. He dove towards the children with all the speed of one hundred and twelve miles per hour, taking one with each arm and pulling them away, making them intangible as he did so.

Danny pulled up from the dive to hang a dozen feet in the air, still holding the siblings. They had been saved from any harm. However, the thin wispy tail that Danny's legs sometimes blended into--particularly when he was traveling at high speeds--had been nicked by a razor sharp claw.

Danny cursed and surveyed the damage. The top and part of the outside of his white boot was torn open, and his left foot bore a long, thin cut. Thankfully, though, it wasn't bleeding badly--hardly at all, in fact. It just hurt, really, in the stinging way a paper cut did.

Danny landed and gently set the children down upon the sidewalk, favoring his left foot slightly.

"You might want to head home," he advised the pair. They stared dumbly for a few minutes, until the older sister recovered, mumbled something indistinguishable, and grabbed her brother's arm to dash off.

"Well, then. It's just you and me now, you big...cat-bird-ghost, uh, thing," Danny addressed the creature, unsure of what to name it.

Looking at it face-on, now, the creature had a lethal-looking beak under piercing red eyes set in a face masked with feathers. In fact, most of its neck and front were dressed in purple down. Long pinions were evident in the spread wings, with an impressive wingspan of nearlythirty feet. The catlike body from the shoulders down was cloaked in richly purple fur. Razor-clawed hind feet that resembled a purple lion's raked at the ground, leaving sharp ruts in the grass, whilefurred forelegs bore talons closely resembling that of an eagle's. Danny didn't have to look hard to know how sharp those were; the pain in his foot was enough.

In short, it was a griffin; the mythological combination of lion and eagle embodied in ghost form.

It opened wide its beak to let out a challenging cry, halfway between a predatory felineroar and the piercing shriek of a diving falcon.

"What a lovely singing voice you must have," Danny commented. He fired a bright green ecto-blast from his hand, watching asit collided with the griffin's chest and knocked it beak over tail.

"This might be easier than I thought," the ghost-boy smiled. The griffin opened its beak yet again, but this time choseto retaliate with a bright blue blast of fire. Danny quickly dodged, but a few of his hairs became singed in the process.

"Or not." Danny raised his voice to reprimand his adversary, "Hey, don't you know it's _dragons_ that're supposed to breathe fire?"

The griffin decided to ignore him and insteadsent another stream of fire his way. This time Danny successfully managed to completely evade it. Instead, the flames engulfed a tree behind him and began dancing as they swallowed leaves, branches, and the twiggy remains of an old bird nest.

Danny glanced behind him at the burning tree.

"All right, I guess I'd better end this before someone gets hurt!"

The ghost boy reached behind his back to pull out the Fenton Thermos. Quickly distracting the griffin with an ecto-blast to the wing, he snapped the lid off with a quick flick of the wrist and sucked the squawkingghost up into the murky depths of the device.

Screwing the lid back on, he landed, wincing as he put weight on his injured foot. Before he could find an abandoned spot to transform back to normal, a call from behind startled him.

"E-excuse me, Mr. Phantom?"

Danny turned at the sound of his self-appointed surname.

"Uh, yeah?"

A woman was standing there. Shehad the samestraw-coloredhair as the young boy that Danny had saved. That same boy, in fact, was standing shyly beside her, clutching her hand. The girl was beside her as well, although she had the dignity of not hanging onto her mother for assurance.

"I'd like to say--well--thank you, for saving Michael and Serena here," she said, her voice rich in grateful emotion. "I- well, if it hadn't been for you, they wouldn't be here right now, and, well, I'd like to say that you're not as bad as ghosts come, for however much that means to you." The woman looked to her children, who took the hint.

Serena scuffed her foot on the ground and mumbled a shy but polite thank-you. Michael actually met Danny's green eyes and stuttered a nervous, but heart-felt, "Th-thank you v-very much, M-M-Mister Phantom!" in his small and childish voice.

Danny was slightly taken aback by this. All anyone had ever given him before while he was in ghost mode was a scream (while running in the opposite direction) or a blast from a bazooka. It hit him--_really_ hit him--that he was no longer the villain in the eyes of all ofAmity Park. He was the good guy now, the brave hero, and it took a shy, stuttered sentence from a little kid half his age to make him realize it.

Smiling inside, Danny regained his composure and gave the best reply he could.

"It means a lot to me. Really. But, please, call me Danny, okay?"

With that, he took off, turning to salute the three in farewell, then sped off to transform back into Danny Fenton and meet up with Tucker and Sam.

* * *

"_You will remember my--_cough_--n-na--_cough, cough..." the blue-haired ghost elapsed into a coughing fit, removing her hands fromher pinkguitar to cough into them. 

"Ember! Are you alright?" the other ghost cried, with something reminiscent of concernin hisvoice. He was Ember's producer, a manager of sorts. He was a relativelyshort, colorless ghost, and wore something of a dark gray suit with a lighter tie. Gray eyes were obscured behind the thick black rims of glasses. He carried a clipboard under one arm, and clutched a black ball-point pen with his other hand.

Floating in front of the camera, he shouted at the camera ghost with a red hat and a green complexion.

"Stop the film! Cut! Cut! I said _stop_!"

"Jeez, you don't need to yell!" the camera ghost complained, rubbing a finger in his ear. "I think you just broke my eardrums."

"Yeah? Well, this isn't about you! It's about _Ember_. The only reason you have your job is because of _Ember_. This is _Ember's_ music video, not yours, and if Ember wants it to be stopped, you _stop_. You understand?" the producer spat threateningly.

"Y-yes, Mr. Mortis!"

"Yeah?" Ember asked her producer. "Well, Ember didn't say stop, did she?" When she went without an answer, the musician pressed the question. "_Did she_?"

"N-no, Ms. McLean!"

"Well, then keep g-g-go- _Ahchoo!_" Ember sneezed. She sniffed wearily, sounding slightly, but unmistakably, nasally.

"Oh, what dipstick had the idea of a music video anyway?" she spat angrily. The manager, camera ghost, and the rest of the staff in the room knew the tone in her voice; no one really dared to answer. "_Well_? Whose idea was it?"

"Y-yours, Ms. McLean!" the manager stammered, hiding behind his clipboard.

Ember brought her guitar down upon the clipboard, breaking it in two with one blow. Mr. Mortis flinched, gritted his teeth,and held up the pen in defense, despite the fact that the protection it offered was laughable.

Ember, however, had dropped the guitar. She placed a hand on her forehead; was it just her, or had the room started spinning? She coughed yet again, feeling very faint all of a sudden, as if she were dehydrated on a very hot day. Her green eyes flickedshut, andshe fell to the floor in unconsciousness.

Everyone in the now strangely quiet studio stared. Ghosts simply couldn't faint; it was impossible. But there was Ember, on the ground, with no explanation.

A slight cough broke through the deadly silence. The camera ghost with the red cap was coughing, ever so quietly, but coughing sure enough.

That was another thing, too. Ghosts couldn't cough.

* * *

-E.P.


	3. Chapter 2: Lid of a Box

**Chapter 2:  
Lid of a Box**

* * *

"Hey, Danny. How'd the ghost-thing go?" Tucker asked his friendonce he hadrejoined them at the Nasty Burger.

"Oh, just some giant purple fire-breathing griffin thing. I beat it in like, half a minute."

"Well, that's a new one," Sam remarked. "So, then what took you so long?"

"I saved these two little kids from it. And then they came back to thank me," Danny explained.

"The ghost or the kids?"

"Oh, ha ha Tucker."

"At least the town likes Danny Phantom now," Sam remarked.

"Yeah? Well _I_ don't," Valerie growled. She had overheard the lastpart of the conversation from her lonely spot at a booth. She smiled at them. "Hey, Danny."

"Oh, uh, hi Valerie," Danny said. "Still holding a grudge?"

"No! What makes you say that?" Valerie replied sharply, crushing one of the napkin dispensers in her hand.

"I think that's a yes," Sam remarked dryly.

Valerie glared at her. Danny decided to find a different subject.

"So, uh, Valerie. We're going to see a movie. Want to come?"

"Sure. It's not like I have anything better to do, since my dad confiscated all of my ghost-hunting stuff."

* * *

"Danny, why'd you have to invite _her_?" Sam whispered angrily as they left for the theater.

"Hey! She doesn't really have any friends anymore," Danny muttered, looking up at the girl walking in front of them andchatting to Tucker.

"So? She's been the victim of her own shallow popularity. As far as I'm concerned, she deserves it. You know how she used to treat us," Sam retorted. "Besides," she continued before Danny could speak, "I don't think she'd let you live it down if she ever found out that you're the ghost-boy. Literally."

"Sam, you worry too much. People change. And besides, I've saved this town how many times now? I think I can handle a ghost-hunter with a grudge, particularly since she doesn't have any of her weapons." Danny looked at Sam as she opened her mouth to speak. "No, and if you keep talking about it while she's ten feet away, Valerie's bound to find out."

Sam glared at Valerie as Danny caught up with them. She had her own reasons for keeping him away from her.

* * *

"Mom? Dad?Jazz?I'm home!" Danny called as he walked through the door.

"Hey, son! I've got good news! We--meaning your mom--fixed the Fenton Finder!" Jackgreeted happily.

"The Fenton Finder?" Valerie, who was still with them, asked. "What's that?"

"It detects ghosts," Maddie said, showing them the device. "Now we just turn it on, and-"

"_BEEP BEEP BEEP!_ Ghost detected," the Fenton Finder bleeped.

"Ha-ha! It works!" Jack exclaimed.

"Uh, that's...great! Now, if you need me for anything that doesn't involve ghosts, I'll be up in my room," Danny said hurriedly, dashing upstairs. He made a mental note to destroy it with a ghost ray the first chance he got.

"Uh, and we'll be up there with him!" Tucker said, while he and Sam both followed Danny.

"I guess I'll follow them," Valerie said, wishing she could remain to look at their entire ghost-hunting surplus.

* * *

The Box Ghost looked at the small box.

It wasroughly the size of those boxes that fancy engraved pens came in, and was dark gray incolor. Green luminous symbols etched on a lid that lay next to the boxproclaimed words in a language he couldn't understand.Both werelined with red velvet, but besides that, were empty. The Box Ghost was annoyed, but it was still a fine specimen. He felt that it would aid him the battles against his formidable enemy.

The box, however, seemed to have other plans. It blurred around the edges, like a square mirage, and began to fade.

The Box Ghost was startled; this wasn't normal box behavior! He watched as it dissipated into wisps of gray smoke, then vanished all together.

He looked at the lid, which, immune to theevaporation of the box,still remained. A new word had appeared beneath the original green writing, written in the same strange, unrecognizable language.

He sighed. He'd found the box floating, already opened, throughout the Ghost Zone. Attracted by its appealing squareness, he'd picked it up. Now all that remained was a lid, and he was no Lid Ghost.

He threw the lid, green symbols and all, away into the abyssal realms of the Ghost Zone.

"Beware!" he cried, although no one was there to hear, and flew off to find an abandoned box-filled warehouse to haunt.

* * *

The rain waterfalled down from the heavy gray cloudsthat blanketed the sky in thick shades of ever-darkening gray. Water cascaded through gutters, gurgled down storm drains, washed through the streets. Windshield wipers were hard put to keep the glass remotely clear on the few cars that sped along the streets, misting up clouds of water from the pavement to mingle with the rapidly-falling drops. Rain leapt up from puddles as it fell, and patteredforcefullyagainst windows and roofs.

Danny was grateful that no ghosts had shown their faces since the rain had begun. Nor did any such paranormal activity seem likely. He had made sure that the Fenton Portal was sealed up tight, striped doors locked and warding off the spectral dimension much as the doors to the outside were shut against the rain. It would be just his luck, battling Skulker or Technus or even the ridiculous Box Ghost outside today.

The rain still managed to put a damper on the day, though. There was nowhere to go. Sam, Tucker and he had quickly exhausted every video game Danny owned. Their movie supply had been exhausted that previous night. And it wasn't as if Danny would willingly seek out some ghost action in this weather.

So,Saturday found a bored trio of teens lounging in the living room of the Fenton household, staring at the blank TV screen.

Jazz found them next.

"What are you doing?" she asked as she came in from the kitchen.

"Watching the TV," Danny replied boredly.

"It's not even on!"

"I know," Danny told her. "I said we were watching _it_; I never said we were watching a show."

Sam turned another page of a dark poetry book she had been reading. She'd read it six times already that day, and was beginning to loose interest, despite the fact that it was her favorite.

"She does have a point," Sam remarked. "Why watch the TV when it's not even on?"

"Because we couldn't think of anything better to do?" Tucker supplied, quite truthfully.

"Well, don't you have any homework?"

"Finished it," they said simultaneously.

"Video games?"

"Played them," they replied, again in unison.

"Ghost fighting?"

"Jazz, there is no way I'm going out in this weather to find a ghost--that might not even be out there in the first place--just so I can fight it!" Danny said angrily, waving his hands to make the point.

"Did someone say GHOST?" a voice boomed. It heralded Jack Fenton,runningup from the basement laboratory.

Danny eyed the now beeping Fenton Finder grasped in his mother's hands, who had followed her husband up the stairs.

"Ghost detected. _BEEP BEEP BEEP!_"

"Uh...yeah!" he said quickly. "Um, it just ran outside!"

"We got a runner!" Jack exclaimed. He dashed outside, into the rain, to fight the supposed ghost. Maddie followed close behind, calling out something aboutFenton Umbrellas, andplacing the Fenton Finder upon a table as there was already one installed in the Fenton RV.

This gave Danny an idea.

"Well, now that they're off chasing phantoms--more figuratively than literally, this time--let's play a little game," Danny remarked evilly, picking up the still-bleeping Fenton Finder. "It's called 'How many ways you can destroy the most annoying ghost detector of all time.'"

"That's a long name," Tucker remarked.

Dannygrinned evillyand phased through the floor, down into the lab. Sam, Tucker, and Jazz followed--via the stairs, of course.

"Danny, you're not really going to-" Sam began.

"Not going to what? Spend the rest of the afternoon thinking of a creative way to trash this thing, and various other ghost-hunting weapons that keep detecting me in the most annoying way possible?" Danny finished innocently. "Wouldn't dream of it," he said, eyes glinting.

"This isn't going to end well, is it?" Tucker asked. No one replied.

Danny had already 'gone ghost', and tossed the Fenton Finder in the air. He aimed a finger at it and sent a brilliant green ghost ray in towards it. Tucker was quick to seize another offending invention--this time the Ghost Gabber--and waved it in the ghost boy's direction.

"Get this one next, Danny!" he called as he threw it up into the air. Danny flew towards it, flipped around,and kicked the Ghost Gabber into the wall where it snapped in two.

"Hey, this _is_ fun!"

Danny flew lower. "Come on, Sam!" he urged. "It's not like any of this stuff really works, anyway! Well, some of it does, but-"

Sam crossed her hands and shook her head, muttering something that sounded like "Boys," in a contemptuous voice.

"Okay, then." Danny grabbed a device that looked somewhat like a toaster and threw it towards his techno-geek friend. "Go long, Tucker!"

Tucker ran to catch the toaster, but missed, and the toaster soared past him to hit a panel on the opposite wall and fall to the ground. As it did so, two toasted pieces of bread popped out half a foot into the air.

The panel the toaster had hit was the 'On' button to the Ghost Portal.

"Nice catch, Tucker," Danny said dryly. He picked up one of the pieces of toast and took a bite. He spat it out, complaining, "Yuck! What'd they do, use ectoplasmic butter?"

Sam pointed to a plastic tub of margarine, which wasfilled to the brim with the slightly luminous green goo. "Survey says, yes."

A small, hard object chose that moment to hit Danny in the back of the head.

"OW!" he exclaimed. "All right, that stupid 'BOO-merang' is going next!"

The item on the ground, however, was not the BOO-merang. Nor was it anything that had come from the FentonWorks lab. It was the dark gray lid of a smallish box, lined with red velvet on the inside, and etched with glittering green symbols in a strange language.

* * *

-E.P. 


	4. Chapter 3: Green Ink

Hey, people! How're you today? I hope this makes it better, because I wrote chapter 3! Yay!

I'm even happier because I promised it would be on Wednesday, and it _is_ Wednesday! Whee!

Ah, but first, the much-appreciated reviewers!**  
**

**crazyvi:** Don't we all. That part will come soon enough ;)

**purpledog100:** Yep. Destroying stuff is one of my hobbies. :D

**CrazyCosmoFan:** That was probably one of my favorite lines myself; I live to entertain :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.

Here we go!

* * *

Chapter 3: Green Ink

* * *

Danny groaned as the science teacher told them to open their books to page 287. With the exception of the griffin he had fought, the weekend had been ghost-free. He'd actually been able to finish his homework, and actually got enough sleep. But still, a Monday was a Monday.

"Today, class, we will start chapter one of section nine. Now, then, can anyone tell me the difference between a virus and a bacterium?"

Danny kept phasing in and out of attention, his mind half-wandering as often happens in such classes, particularly when there is something on your mind.

And Danny's mind was on a mysterious gray lid.

It had hit him (literally) that the box came from the Ghost Zone. With a luminous sheen and slightly glowing letters, coupled with the open Fenton Portal as proof, what more evidence did he need?

The fact that the lid had come from the Ghost Zone was enough to make him wary. Not much good came out of the Ghost Zone. Danny, however, had kept the lid against instinct. Something looked vaguely familiar about the strange symbols etched upon the lid, and Danny could have sworn he'd seen similar characters before somewhere. The problem was, he couldn't remember where he'd seen them.

Danny absent-mindedly scratched down the notes from the chalkboard onto his paper in an untidy scrawl.

"Correct. Bacteria can be treated with antibiotics. Viruses, however, cannot. Now, how many here have gotten a vaccination from a doctor's office before?"

Everyone raised their hand in the air. Danny decided he should at least try to pay attention; he had a D in the class as it was.

"Very good then. Vaccinations are one of the few guards against viral infections. An immunization contains a form of the virus; however, it is not an active form. As such, the virus cannot infect the person. This would be entirely pointless, if not for the human's immune system. Now, can anyone tell me what that is?"

Danny began spacing out again, thoughts still on the mysterious lid. Where on earth (or in the Ghost Zone, more like) had he seen those symbols before? And where had the box come from? Things didn't just fly out of the Ghost Zone, at least not that he knew of.

"Yes. The immunization _trains _the white blood cells to recognize and destroy the virus. That way, if ever the person is infected by the virus, they will have a much better defense against it. Vaccinations can be made for bacterial infections as well. But the tricky part with immunizations is that there are different strains of viruses. Meaning that, if the strain you are infected with was not included in the immunization, you will be infected by the virus.

"An example of this is the common cold. There are so many mutations of this virus that it is impossible to make a vaccination for all of them. Every time you come down with a cold, it is a different strain of the virus."

Danny drifted off again, and began doodling on a scrap piece of paper. He was actually in the middle of a very good caricature of Plasmius (at least in his eyes) when he heard his name called.

"How about... Daniel."

Danny looked up at the sudden mention of his name and covered his work, not to be seen doodling on his paper.

"Wh-what?"

Giggles were stifled as the teacher gave him a severe look. He walked over to Danny's desk.

"Mr. Fenton, may I please see your notes?"

Knowing that he was in trouble now, Danny handed him the sheet of paper. Mr. Murray placed good notes in high regard, and Danny's work often came up as sub-par due to his sleeping in class.

"I don't remember instructing you to use green ink?" he asked. That was another thing. Mr. Murray was one of those teachers who was bothered by little things, like unusually colored ink and fringes on pages torn from notebooks.

"I- what?" Danny asked, surprised. He had made sure that he used black. Furthermore, he didn't own a single pen containing green ink.

The teacher shook his head.

"Improve on your note-taking skills, Mr. Fenton, and you will go far. And, don't doodle on your notes." He replaced the paper and returned to the front of the class and scribbled the homework assignment on the board.

Danny was, by now, completely baffled. He hadn't doodled on his notes; he'd made sure that his picture was on a separate sheet. Perhaps the ink had bled through...

Danny looked at the sheet with surprise. This was _definitely_ something he needed to tell Tucker and Sam.

The bell for lunch rang, and he placed his book and notebook in his purple backpack. The perplexing notes he placed inside his pocket.

* * *

He showed the paper to Tucker and Sam over lunch.

The notes began in black ink, with his name at the top and the creative title of 'Notes- Science'. The first few lines were scribbled in the same black ink. However, in the sixth line, the ink made a startling color change: from inky black to stark, luminous green.

The strange paper, however, got stranger. The lines, from sixth to eighteenth, were scribbled in green, with two breaks of black in the eighth and twelfth lines. And the nineteenth line wasn't even written in English. It was written in strange symbols sketched with bold, firm strokes, as well as in the twentieth and twenty-first lines of the notes.

"So, what do you think about that?" he asked them.

"I don't know... Hey, maybe it's a new ghost power!" Tucker exclaimed excitedly.

"Wow. Bright green handwriting. I can't think of _anything_ more helpful in fighting ghosts," Danny replied sarcastically.

Sam observed the paper critically.

"Danny, do you still have that lid you found?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said, pulling the gray rectangle from his backpack. "Why?"

Sam placed it down on the table next to the notes, and pointed to the last three lines.

"Look familiar?"

Danny gasped; the letters in the lines were exactly the same as the letters on the box. Or... no. They weren't _exactly_ the same. The same recognizable language, yes. In fact, the symbols were a perfect match for the nineteenth and twentieth lines. But the twenty-first line was entirely different. It even included symbols that weren't on the box in the first place.

"What d'you make of this? Look," Danny said, pointing out what he had just noticed. "It matches perfectly for these two lines. But on this last line, here, it's entirely different."

"And you _wrote this_?" Tucker asked with amazement.

"Well... Yeah. I mean, I think I did. I don't really remember actually writing it, but... It's in my handwriting," Danny explained.

He looked at the writing where it shifted to black. Danny realized that he could trace his thought process with this. The black writing was when he was paying attention. The green writing occurred where he had been spacing, writing absentmindedly and thinking about that lid.

And he also realized that the two lines which matched the symbols on the lid had occurred when he was trying to recall what exactly the lid had said.

"Well, there's only one way to find out how this happened," Danny said suddenly. He picked up the pen and pulled out a bit of scrap paper. He concentrated on making the pen ink green. It didn't exactly work. He succeeded only in causing the pen to become intangible, and several scribbles later caused the pen to run out of ink.

"Darn it!" he muttered, and threw the pen down. "This'll never work."

"Hey, what's this?" Tucker asked, and flipped the paper over to reveal Danny's sketch of Plasmius. Tucker looked up at Danny.

"Well," he said, quite serious. "If we learned nothing else from this, it's that Plasmius looks good in a mustache."

* * *

Skulker looked at the green blob. It gave a feeble sort of cough, and closed its eyes, going limp in the skeletal ghost robot's metallic hand.

"Third one today," he muttered to himself. "This is taking the fun out of the Hunt."

Skulker shrugged and threw the limp blob into a blue trashcan labeled 'Expired Prey'.

He groaned. He just couldn't understand why his prey supply was suddenly dropping. Of the thirty-three ghosts he had once held captive in various cages and let out only so he could tone his hunting skills, only eight remained. It was almost as if a disease were spreading through them, decimating them one after another. And it all began with coughing...

But that was impossible. Ghosts couldn't be infected with any sort of disease.

He was startled by a sudden sound behind him. An orange-tinted squid he had dubbed Percy began coughing. Skulker groaned; Percy was one of the most fun to hunt, and he would hate to loose it next...

Skulker sneezed suddenly. This was quickly followed by a horrible, hacking cough that he had heard far too often over the past few days.

Now _he_ was coughing too? What was the Ghost Zone coming to?

Skulker coughed again, feeling faint. He should probably lie down for a bit...

He stomped into a room. An immense bed took up most of the space, and the walls were lined with various trophies and weapons. At the foot of the bed, a sign in red ink read 'Reserved for ghost-boy's pelt'.

He blew his nose, coughed again, and lowered himself onto the bed.

Skulker was unconscious before he touched the covers.

* * *

Danny walked into his house. He could hear strange noises coming from his parent's lab. He deduced that they were working on some sort of new invention and decided not to bother them.

The telephone rang, quite suddenly, in fact.

"Danny! Can you get that?" Jazz called from upstairs in her room. "I'm working on my philosophy essay."

"Sure," he shouted back, and picked up the phone.

"Hello?" he asked.

"Ah, hello. This is Alex," the other voice responded. "Alex Fuller. Can I talk to Jazz?"

"She's kind of busy right now," Danny replied.

"Well, can she call me back? But I don't think she has my number..."

Danny pulled a pen out of his pocket, and moved the pad of paper next to the phone for message-taking purposes towards himself.

"Okay. So what is it?"

"Eight four three..." There was a pause as Danny scribbled this down. "Seven eight four two. You got that?"

"Yep," Danny said as he finished the numeral two. "So, I'll let her know then. That's all?"

"Yes, and thanks. Bye."

"Bye," Danny said. He hurried up the stairs to tell Jazz. He had a pretty good idea of who Alex Fuller was...

"Hi Jazz," Danny said as he peeked through the door. Jazz was sitting at her desk, her pen moving at a furious speed. Danny cleared his throat.

"You've got a message. From a one _Alex Fuller_."

Danny couldn't help grinning at the expression on Jazz's face. She looked very white.

"He left his number. Now, I wonder why he didn't just leave a message for you. Nothing _personal_, is it?"

"I- I can't imagine..." Jazz began. "Um, can I have that paper?"

"Maybe..." Danny trailed off, grinning maliciously at his sister.

Jazz jumped up from her chair, knocking it over, and lunged towards the scrap of paper in Danny's hand. Danny held it away from her.

"Now that's no way to ask for it," he said in a falsely hurt voice. "I didn't hear you say 'please'."

"Danny, what are you-" Jazz stopped at the look on his face. "Oh, all _right._ Please?"

"Say, 'pretty please'."

"Oh, that's it Danny! Give me that!" Jazz cried angrily, grabbing for the paper.

A brief tug-o-war ensued. Danny won by making the paper intangible and pulling it straight through Jazz's fingers. He placed it against the wall and clicked his pen.

"I think we need a few hearts on this..." Danny said, placing the pen on the paper. Nothing happened.

"Oh, darn! Ink's out," he muttered. "Okay, fine. Take it, Jazz." Danny thrust the slip at her.

Jazz took it, blushing slightly. She looked down at the scrap, and had only one confused word to say about it.

"Green?"

"Wh-what?" Danny said suddenly, hurrying over to look at the paper. "Jazz, let me see that!"

Jazz held it over her head. "You should say 'please' first," she replied mockingly.

"No, Jazz! This is serious!" Danny leapt up and yanked it out of her hand, staring at it.

Sure enough, '843-7842, Alex Fuller' was written upon the paper, clear as day in bright green ink.

Danny pulled the pen from his pocket, and, despite the fact that it was out of ink, drew a squiggly line. A bright, green squiggly line.

Danny looked up at Jazz, then slowly handed her the paper. Then he turned to leave the room.

"Danny, can I have that pen?" came the slightly puzzled voice from behind him.

Danny shrugged and tossed it to Jazz. "Here. But it's out of ink."

"But... If it's out of ink, then how did you-?"

"I don't know. But I'm going to find out," Danny replied determinedly, and walked to his own room.

* * *

The black, shadowy form of Dr. Penelope Spectra crumpled the paper in her clawed hands and threw it over her shoulder to a wastebasket.

"This has got to be one of your worst plans yet, Bertrand," she snarled. "How am I supposed to get rid of that ever so annoying ghost-boy while you can't think of a decent revenge scheme?"

"I'm _trying _to, Penny, but that ghost-boy's a lot smarter than he looks!" the green blobby assistant argued.

"Bertrand, I thought I told you not to call me Penny?" Spectra replied in a voice so sweet it was malevolent.

Bertrand blew his nose in a handkerchief before replying.

"Well, what would you have me call you then? Besides, don't get mad at _me_, I haven't been feeling well lately."

Spectra coughed slightly. She hadn't been feeling well herself, but she couldn't let Bertrand know that, so instead she responded harshly.

"Hmph. I don't _care _if you haven't been feeling well. You're a _ghost_, for heaven's sake! And you haven't been-" the ghost psychiatrist paused suddenly, as Bertrand keeled over and fell to the ground. Far from being concerned, she scoffed angrily, "Good help is hard to find."

Spectra coughed again. She felt quite dizzy, and could barely keep her eyes open. Perhaps she should go lie down, or have some tea...

The shadowy psychiatrist's eyes closed as she slumped in her chair.

"So... tired..." was the last thing she muttered, as sleep took her.

* * *

Ahhh... Isn't it wonderful how karma gets back at the villians? I think so.

Heheh, I think I'm getting more mysterious as I write this. Maybe '_Enigmatic_ Penguin' _is_ a really descriptive pen name for myself...

And, is it just me, or are my chapters getting longer?

Anyway, I'd like to see some comments on this chapter. Let it be known that I have a bit more information I'm going to spill out for you before Danny falls ill. Rest assured, though, if not the very next chapter, then it will be chapter 5. So be patient, and bear with me here.

All the best,

-E.P.


	5. Chapter 4: Questions Raised

Ahh… time for the much-awaited chapter four!

As for this update, the only reason I had it so soon is because some people broke a barometer and spilled mercury in my school, so it's closed while it is decontaminated! Yay! So that's who you can thank for this update…

Ah, the reviewers! And on that note, this is the most I've ever received for a chapter. Probably because I've left it so long in updating. It's a good thing I can swim, because I nearly drowned in the praise ;)

**GIR's Cupcake:** Congratulations, you've just won my 'Longest Review Ever' award! I'm just glad that you like my story that much. Elated, really :D Foreshadowing is probably my favorite literary technique, and I use it a lot. And it's good to know I've been keeping everyone in character; personally I think that's the hardest part of writing fanfiction.

**Purple Ghost Sausage:** Yes, that's one of the many things I've been considering in this story. You'll be seeing the effects of that in the next chapter, I believe. But for now, I'll give you this as an answer to your question: Can Danny still use his ghost powers when he's human?

**crazyvi: **Thanks for the review, and I'm glad you've liked it so far!

**iamratgirl: **The parts always come out as soon as I can write them. Consequently, I usually update fast!

**EvilRobotZombieLoofaOverlord:** Yes, my second fanfiction. But I've lost count of the stories I've written before this, whether it is for an English assignment or for fun, so I'm not really new to writing. Anyway, I'm glad you like it. And wow, you have a long name

**Moonbay:** Yep, everyone loves my writing style. Thank you :) 

**GlowingGreenEyes:** Yes, sadly, there are far too many poorly-written DP fics out there, bearing a confusing (and pointless) plot, with all the characters out of character and an OCXDanny pairing. (Um, no offense to anyone else who might be reading this, OK?) I tolerate OC's (heck, look at Tammy!) but I hate the utterly predictable and uncreative plots many have. And OCXDanny makes me want to strangle someone, preferably the OC. Gah, I'm ranting! Anyway, thanks for the review! And the shower :P

**CrazyCosmoFan:** Hah! What a coincidence ;) Hope you get well soon! 

**leilanisangel: **I hope it does more than just sound good, but I'm glad you like it and thanks for the review!

Anyway, thanks everyone for the wonderful reviews! This took up a whole page in Word! Well, here comes the story (after the disclaimer, of course!).

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.

* * *

Chapter 4: Questions Raised

* * *

Danny copied the characters on the box, for the fifth time, in his bright green ink. It didn't help; he had the symbols memorized but was no closer to being able to read them than he was to getting an A on his science test next week. 

Yes, he knew he should be studying. He'd even opened the textbook and began reading, but the words kept slipping through his mind. When, half an hour later, he'd read the same sentence three dozen times without taking a single word in, Danny gave up and went to look at his notes. It wasn't as if that was more helpful. In fact, it was probably making his futile attempts to study even worse.

Danny had dejectedly given up, and began practicing with the strange new ghost power of writing in green ink. And now that was becoming as pointless as his study attempts.

In a way, he half-wished a ghost would show its ugly face around here, just to give him something to do that didn't require much concentration. Even the Box Ghost.

Danny sighed deeply, and pulled out his essay on the Revolutionary War.

* * *

Tucker groaned and leaned back in his chair. 

The techno-geek had spenta good part of the evening looking up various scripts on the web. Namely, ghost scripts.

He'd been sorting through various languages written in characters; Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Greek, even Egyptian hieroglyphics. And he'd found...nothing.

Tucker sighed and clicked on the very last hyperlink at the bottom of the page. He might as well try at least one more website...

Scrolling down and ignoring several pop-ups, he groaned again. Most of this was the blog of some archaeologist on his discoveries of cave paintings. The pictures mostly showed stick figures holding spears and chasing jagged-lined buffalo; Tucker found it very amusing.

Tucker laughed through sixty-two entries, spanned over seven pages. On the last page, beneath the final two posts, there was several links to other websites. A picture next to the second from the bottom link showed some symbols that looked somewhat vaguely like the symbols on the lid. Most importantly, they were written in green.

Tucker clicked; it was the best lead he had so far and he didn't intend to waste it.

The hyperlink took him to a page that proclaimed: _server down_. The techno-geek clicked the back button, and tried the link two more times, each time getting an identical message.

He was very annoyed now. Tucker threw down the mouse angrily, then made sure that he hadn't harmed it.

The mouse was still working, and the cursor rested over the picture of the green symbols. The arrow had turned into a pointing hand, such as cursors do when they are placed over a hyperlink. Tucker was quick to click the picture.

No _'server down'_ message was displayed. The page was black, and the text was dark gray. Tucker groaned and turned the contrast up; why do people always make it so hard to read?

There was a title, which read simply: Mysterious Green Language. The title was followed by a short paragraph.

'_Signs of a language yet unknown to us promotes the idea of another culture, evidently incredibly advanced for their time. The script consists of complicated hieroglyphs, although is not reminiscent of any known language to use characters. For reasons unknown, it is only written in a slightly luminous green ink, which is believed to be formed from some sort of fungus. No known translation of this language currently exists._'

This paragraph was followed by various digital photographs of the script, as well as a list of all the characters identified by examples of the language.

Tucker scribbled down the address, then picked up his telephone and dialed Danny's number.

It was busy. Tucker hang up the phone, thought a minute, and then dialed Danny's cell phone.

* * *

Danny started as his phone rang; it was on vibrate in his pocket and at maximum volume. 

His History textbook fell to the floor, and Danny accidentally scratched a long, dark line with his pencil across the paper. He fished the still buzzing phone out of his pocket and flipped it open.

"Hello?" he asked, voice still shaking slightly from surprise.

"Hi, Danny? It's Tucker."

"Yeah, what's up?"

"I found a website about that green writing. D'you want me to e-mail it to ya?"

"Sure," Danny answered, placing the phone on his shoulder and holding it in place with his head while he turned the computer on. A few clicks later (accompanied by Tucker humming absently over the phone) and...

"Okay. Send it on over, Tuck."

Tucker complied, and Danny examined the webpage that popped up.

"Hmm, anything else?"

"Nope. Hey, why was your phone busy?" Tucker said curiously.

Danny laughed at this.

"Hah, bet it's Jazz," Danny smiled. "Talking to _Alex_."

Tucker laughed and hung up.

Danny closed the phone and placed it on his desk, then looked at the website.

_Well,_ Danny thought, _nothing I couldn't have figured out on my own. But at least it's something..._

He picked up his history book from the floor, and erased the black line on his paper. Danny tapped the pencil against his chin thoughtfully, trying to remember what he had been writing about.

It was no use; Danny couldn't concentrate. He sighed. Then he gasped; his breath had turned momentarily blue.

Danny sighed again, transformed into his ghostly alter ego, and flew out the window.

* * *

Danny had flown for quite a while, and still caught no sight of the ghost. 

Above him, the sky was in the throes of dusk. A few scattered clouds were tinged pinkish-orange, and a sliver of sun was still peeking over the horizon.

His breath turned blue again as he flew over the park. So the ghost was close.

And it was. Danny caught sight of the purple griffin he had fought three days ago.

"You again!" he exclaimed as he flew down to confront the creature.

The griffin gave its shrieking roar in reply.

"Ugh, try a breath mint, will ya?" Danny commented, feigning disgust.

"Hey, look! It's Inviso-bill! Everyone, run for your lives!" someone shouted below.

"That's not Inviso-bill. That's Danny Phantom; Inviso-bill is his evil twin," a woman said knowingly.

"Yesh, thatsh wight!" a little girl of about six or so added. "Invisho-bwill doeshn't haff a lwogo."

"The kid has a point," another man said. "Inviso-bill had the same costume, but he didn't have the logo."

Danny looked down at the arguing park full of citizens.

"Um, we can discuss my identity later!" he called to them. "Right now you might want to RUN! Overgrown purple feather dusters can be pretty dangerous!"

The people stopped arguing, looked at one another, and then ran off. A few screamed "GHOST!" for effect, and one or two called back, "Good luck, Phantom!" or "You can beat 'im, Danny!" in encouraging voices.

Danny smiled, and turned to the griffin.

"You don't get that kind of support, do you?" he asked. The griffin reared up and flared his wings, roaring.

"Ah, that's right, you're not much of a talker, are you?" Danny nimbly dodged the blast of blue fire and the raking claws. He reached behind his back for the Fenton Thermos, but... _it wasn't there!_

"Oh no! I left it behind!" Danny gasped, mentally kicking himself.

The griffin swiped at him while he was preoccupied with forgetting the thermos. Danny cried out in pain as the talons sliced into his shoulder, leaving two long rips in his sleeve and two thin, painful cuts in his arm.

"Ah-ow!" Danny cried. He gripped his arm, and winced as his hand came away covered in green ectoplasmic blood.

"All right, so if I can't bring the thermos to you, I'll just have to bring you to the thermos," he muttered.

Danny flew up to eye level with the griffin and stuck out his tongue.

"Nyah-nyah! Betcha can't catch me!"

The griffin rasped a loud roar at the childish taunt, and swiped a claw at Danny. The ghost-boy danced away from the claws and flew higher, just out of reach of both fire and talons.

"Nope, gonna have to try better'n that!" Danny taunted.

The griffin made a slight noise, like a sneeze, then roared and spread its wings, taking flight.

Danny quickly sped off with the griffin following him, weaving a tortuous path above rooftops. Despite its awkward appearance, the griffin was very agile and very fast.

But flying was one of Danny's specialties, and he managed to stay just out of reach; not so far ahead that the griffin would give up chasing him, but not too close to the pointed beak and razor-sharp talons.

"Almost there..." Danny said to himself as the unmistakable form of his house swam into view in the failing light.

Behind him, the griffin gave a loud rasping shriek. In fact, it was more of a cough than a shriek, but Danny was concentrating too hard on flying to notice the subtle difference.

The griffin made the strange wheezy sneezing noise again, then coughed. This time, however, Danny noticed.

He stopped and turned around just in time to see the red eyes close, the wings stop flapping. The griffin teetered over to one side and fell out of the air, onto a parked car. The car's alarm went off, and a few people screamed in surprise.

Danny flew down to where the griffin was. It didn't move, almost as if it were unconscious. Danny moved closer, and when nothing happened, poked it.

Danny jumped back almost immediately, expecting the griffin to lash out with its claws. But... it didn't.

Danny stared at it for a few minutes, then flew to his house, phased through the wall to his room, picked up the Fenton Thermos, and returned to the seemingly unconscious griffin.

Nothing had changed during the brief time he had been gone, except that there was now a small crowd of curious people surrounding the griffin and talking confusedly to one another.

Danny pulled the lid off the Fenton Thermos, almost ceremonially, and silently sucked the griffin into the depths of the long-used device. He screwed the lid back on, and stared at where the griffin had been for a few seconds, before making himself invisible and flying back to his room to finish his essay.

* * *

If Danny had found it difficult to concentrate before, then it was impossible now. He gave up trying to finish a paragraph on the Declaration of Independence and lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. 

This had never happened before. When it came to fighting ghosts, he was usually the one to faint. Come to think of it, he'd never actually seen a true ghost loose consciousness. Danny hadn't even thought it was possible, that passing out was an unfortunate peculiarity to being half-ghost.

No time to brood on this, though, as a wisp of blue breath escaped his mouth for the second time that evening.

Danny sighed and slid off of his bed. He'd had a nice break from ghosts all weekend. In fact, it was one of the longest breaks he'd ever had, but Danny had been too preoccupied with a certain box lid to notice.

He muttered, "Going ghost..." half-heartedly to himself. It seemed almost pointless, really, as no one was around. He transformed and looked around for sign of the ghost; true night had fallen and Danny didn't want to fly around in the dark. With his luck, it was probably the stupid Box Ghost anyway.

And, sure enough...

"I am the Box Ghost!" came the faint cry from downstairs.

Danny groaned and phased through the floor into the kitchen, which was directly below his room. Danny peered around, and heard the ghost ranting from the basement.

"Well, you wanted some action tonight, Phantom," he muttered, then silently reprimanded himself for talking in third person and phased through the floor.

The Box Ghost was there, sure enough. He was next to a large cardboard box that had once housed some of the junk Danny had sold in an illicit garage sale for some cash so he could attend a party.

"I am the Box Ghost! And I shall harness your cardboard squareness-"

Danny cleared his throat loudly, and the Box Ghost stopped talking and looked up.

"Beware!" he cried, and the box flew towards Danny. Danny dodged and held up the Fenton Thermos, which he had remembered to bring with him.

"Would you like a parting 'Beware!', or should I just get rid of you now?" Danny asked.

Another box, smaller this time, flew towards Danny and knocked the thermos out of his hand.

"Ow!" Danny cried, shaking his hand to stop it from stinging. "Haven't I been injured enough today?" he appealed to the ceiling.

The Box Ghost suddenly coughed. Danny looked at him.

"Yes?" the ghost-boy asked. The Box Ghost coughed again and answered.

"_C-cough_- I am fleeing the accursed Sickness! Flee also, lest you fall to its sleeping lure!" he cried.

Danny was confused. The Box Ghost sounded almost fearful; Danny hadn't heard that tone in any ghost's voice since the Pariah Dark incident.

"Um, what?" he asked.

The Box Ghost coughed again, and suddenly fell to the floor in unconsciousness. Danny flew over, as baffled as ever.

"Danny?" a voice asked from the door.

Danny turned around to see Jazz standing there.

"Um, hi Jazz," he answered, looking back at the Box Ghost. He poked him, and the Box Ghost didn't move. Just like the griffin...

Jazz came over and looked at the Box Ghost.

"Um, what is _that_?" she asked.

"The Box Ghost. He, uh... Well, he likes boxes," Danny replied.

"Is, uh, is something wrong with him?" Jazz asked.

"Well, he's usually not the brightest at the best of times, but um... For all I know, he could be dead," Danny replied.

"He's already a ghost!" Jazz exclaimed.

"I noticed," Danny answered dryly. "Um, help me with this, will you?" Danny asked as he hefted the unconscious Box Ghost up. Jazz complied by opening the Fenton Portal.

Danny heaved the ghost through the portal, and Jazz closed it as he rubbed his hands.

"Danny, you're hurt!" Jazz exclaimed, concerned, and pointed at his shoulder.

Danny glanced at his arm.

"Oh, that happened earlier," he replied. "It's nothing to worry about, it's not like I haven't been hurt b-b-be-_AHCHOO!_" Danny sneezed. He suddenly didn't feel very well.

"You okay?" Jazz asked. Danny coughed into his hands.

"I'm fi-_cough c-cough_..." Danny elapsed into a small coughing fit. He regained control of his breathing, and looked up at Jazz, smiling weakly.

"Then again, maybe not. I think I might be coming down with a cold or so-"

Danny coughed again, very weakly, and collapsed to the ground. He transformed back into Danny Fenton almost immediately.

"Danny!" Jazz cried.

* * *

Awww... I can't be _that _evil and leave the story hanging here, now, can I? Well, apparently, I can! Mwa-ha-ha! 

Anyway, I'll try to update as soon as I can. Until then...

Evilly suspenseful,  
-E.P.


	6. Chapter 5: Home Sick

After that awful, suspensefully concluding chapter four, here is chapter five, which you have been anxiously awaiting to read. But first…

Reviewers! Yay!

**CrazyCosmoFan: **Yep, cliffies are evil. Which is why I love them ;)

**GIR's Cupcake:** You know what? Your name is making me hungry for some reason. Cupcakes. Yummy. Conspiracy theory mode? Heheh… Does the Box Ghost need an explanation for anything he does? I remembered that he warned Danny in one of the episodes whose name escapes me… Um, I think it's 'Prisoner of Love', but I'm not sure. I'm bad with names, and I haven't seen said episode in a while. And I just threw in that Alex guy for side interest. But, you never know with me. I'm always adding in random little things that get just skipped over but come up later in the story of some importance, and putting it in right next to random stuff of no importance just to confuse people. (_winks_) And the griffin? Whenever I need random ghosts, I'll go with the 'pick a random discolored giant mythological creature' option.

**Purple Ghost Sausage:** Hey, your name makes me hungry too! Yes, I know I am ebil. How on earth could I not know?

**purpledog100:** Not really, considering that now some of the classes are behind, we have a lot of homework. But on the bright side, all of the science classes were cancelled for two days after my school reopened, so we watched 'The Day After Tomorrow' in the theater. And I've probably just made you really jealous. Bad Penguin!

**Lady Gallatea Ravenclaw:** Hey, you have a long name too. Why am I attracting people with long names? I must be special! No one seems to be able to wait for more. Patience is a virtue ;)

**crazyvi:** You say 'O' a lot, for some reason… And yeah, I had to stop there. It would almost be a crime not to, don't you think?

**Iamratgirl: **Everyone thinks I am ebil for some reason. I wonder why… (_pretends to be thoughtful_) Nope, no idea O:-)

**Ari-Griffin:** Griffin? Hmm… Anyway, thank you! I'm glad you like it!

**little-n-lost: **I've lost count of the times I've been called evil so far. I will try my best to 'keep it up', but the story is getting heavy, and my arms are tired. ;) Anyway, glad you like it!

**DarkAnimePhantom: **Horridable? Okay, I know that was a typo, but I like that! I'm going to use that word now to annoy all of my friends. Reviews can give such interesting inspiration. oO Why did I use such an evil cliffhanger? Because I can:P

**Silverstagbeauty: **Four _love it_'s it all caps? I feel so loved Thank you!

**Zirra Nova:** Arr! I'm glad you be a-liken me booty, so ye are! Haharrharr! But we'll just be a-seein' about them cliffhangers, so we will!

**PhantomKat7: **Aww, and none of my other chapters were cool? They're all jealous now… Heheh, LOL :P

**good story: **Ah, doesn't everybody? Oh, but, um, I'd prefer it if you not ask when I'm going to put the next chapter up. If I know when I'm going to put if up, or if I'm setting a goal for a certain date, I generally tell you when it will be in a footnote of some sort. If not, I generally put my chapters up as soon as they're finished. Sorry, but it's just pointless, because I don't feel like e-mailing everyone to tell them when exactly I'm putting my chapter up. Ugh, I ramble too much, don't you think? Anyway, can I take your name as a personal compliment?

**EvilRobotZombieLoofaOverlord: **I read a lot too. But random names are fun :P I'll just call you Erzlo for now, because those are your initials and it's an acronym I can actually pronounce.

As ever, thank you reviewers, thank you! This actually beat last chapter, with fifteen whole reviews. FIFTEEN! All the praise is going to go to my head. So be honest with me: Are you all conspiring to drown me in reviews? Good thing I have a life jacket, heheh.

Anyway, I'm sure you'd all just love to hear me blabber on and on and on all day, but you have a story that, judging by all of the _update soon_'s in my reviews, you all are anxious to read. So I'll let you get to it, hm?

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom. Bummer, eh?

* * *

Chapter 5: Home Sick

* * *

The bright blue eyes opened groggily. Danny groaned and sat up, taking in his surroundings. 

He was sitting on the couch, covered by a blanket which had half-fallen to the floor when he sat up.

"Danny! Oh, good, you're okay!" Jazz hurried over to him as soon as she saw that he was up.

"What- what happened?" he asked, but as soon as the words left his mouth, he remembered.

"Oh... that's right," he said, half to himself. "I felt all dizzy, and really tired, and then..." Danny's voice drifted off. A few silent moments later, in which Jazz peered intently at him, Danny posed a question to Jazz.

"How'd I get here?"

"I carried you up here after you passed out. You should really eat more, you know. You're really light," Jazz answered. "So, how're you feeling?"

"Fine," Danny answered. "No, really! I feel great," he protested at the look Jazz gave him. And it was true. He'd felt awful before he had fainted, as if he had a bad cold or something. Now, however, he felt fine. Just... sleepy, groggy, sluggish... as if he'd just woken up. And, really, he had just woken up, so it was no big deal.

"Danny, you've been asleep for almost a whole day! How is that fine?" Jazz argued.

"WHAT! A whole day?" Danny exclaimed.

"Yes, you've missed school and everything. Tucker and Sam came by to see you earlier, they wanted to know if you're okay."

"Grghmmm..." Danny groaned in reply. He'd have to make up a math test, not to mention all the homework he'd probably have. And he still had to finish that essay on the Revolutionary War and study for the science test on top of that…

Danny sneezed suddenly, and fell through the couch. He shivered, forced himself to become tangible again, and got up.

Jazz was staring at him.

"What was _that_ all about?" she asked.

"No idea," Danny muttered, slightly shocked. It had been quite a while since he'd accidentally phased through something. He supposed that it had to happen every once in a while, but it was still disconcerting. He hadn't made his whole body intangible since he'd first gotten his powers. And come to think of it, he hadn't fainted after a ghost battle since about that long ago, either...

"Danny... are you alright?" Jazz asked timidly.

"Fine," he muttered again. He coughed several times and looked at Jazz. "Okay, maybe not so fine."

"Danny! Oh, you're awake!" Danny's mom ran up to him. She placed her hand upon his forehead, the age-old method of testing one's temperature, and began worrying over him in the way mothers often do. "Are you okay? What happened? Oh, I should call a doctor!"

Danny's dad came up with her, brandishing the Fenton Peeler.

"What's wrong, son? Maybe it's a ghost virus!"

Danny groaned and managed to avoid annoying awkward questions by telling them that he was hungry.

Ten minutes later, he was eating a bowl of steaming chicken noodle soup, and being forced to endure slightly less awkward but just as annoying questions anyway. He answered most of them with a nod or shake of the head, or an occasional "I feel fine!" in protest.

It was little use. Soon, Danny's mom was on the phone, calling up a doctor.

The doctor arrived quite soon.

"I didn't even know they made house calls any more," Danny commented to Jazz as he saw the car pull up through his window. (Danny had gone up to his room after he'd finished the soup.)

The doorbell rang. Danny walked into the hall and half-listened to his parents talking to the doctor.

"Danny! Come down here," his mother called. Danny walked down the stairs, feeling slightly apprehensive. Would a doctor somehow notice that he was half ghost? Or ask awkward questions that he'd have to answer in front of his ghost-hunting parents?

"Danny, this is Dr. Matthews. Dr. Matthews, this is Danny," Jazz introduced. Dr. Matthews offered his hand to Danny.

"Good afternoon, Danny," he said, quite pleasantly. The doctor was dressed as most doctors are, in a long white coat with several pens poking out of the breast pocket and tan pants. He had thick glasses, brown hair, and brown eyes. A stethoscope was looped about his neck, and he carried a black bag.

"Good afternoon," Danny replied politely, shaking the pro-offered hand.

"Now, why don't you step into my temporary office?" he said, gesturing towards the living room with a small smile.

The doctor examined Danny; taking his blood pressure, listening to his heart and lungs, looking in his ears, mouth, and eyes, and all the things doctors do during a check up.

This over with, Dr. Matthews began asking Danny questions, mainly about the symptoms.

"Hmm, coughing, sore throat, slight nasal congestion... I'd say flu, but it's early for the season. Of course, it's most likely a simple cold or an allergic reaction. Any other symptoms?"

"Well, I-" Danny began.

"Danny passed out, last night," Jazz supplied.

"Jazz!" Danny muttered, elbowing her.

"You passed out?" Dr. Matthews asked, mildly surprised. Danny nodded. "Hm, that's not normal. Have you ever overexerted yourself with any physical activities?"

"Um... No, not really..." Danny said. He couldn't meet the doctor's eyes.

Dr. Matthews, however, seemed to know that something was wrong. He knelt down to Danny's level on the couch.

"You do realize that, if you're lying, there might be something seriously wrong with you that I wouldn't know about? Listen, son, I have your best interests at heart-"

Danny turned his head quickly aside as he felt his eyes flare green, an automatic reflex at hearing those words. He hated being called that. It was far too reminiscent of a man who called Danny 'son' every time he saw him...

"Don't- don't call me 'son'," Danny said, a little more coldly than he intended.

"Well... If you're sure nothing's wrong..." Dr. Matthews said, stating it as one would a question. Danny turned back to him, certain that his eyes were once again blue.

"Yes, I'm sure," Danny said, meeting his eyes and being sure not to blink, so Dr. Matthews wouldn't think he was lying. "Like you said, it's probably just a cold, or an allergy, or something like that..."

"Well, okay then." The doctor got up. He packed away his various instruments into his black bag and walked to the door. Danny saw him pause to talk to his parents, then nodded politely to them and left.

"I- I think I'll just go upstairs, then..." Danny said. When no one contradicted him, he hurried out of the room.

The doorbell rang again, almost as soon as he had opened the door. Danny turned around and walked back into the hall, where he could observe whoever was at the door.

Jazz opened the door to reveal Sam and Tucker.

"Danny!" Sam cried, rushing upstairs with Tucker close behind. Jazz blinked and closed the door behind them, and walked off.

"Danny! Oh, I was so worried..." Sam said, as she embraced Danny. Tucker smirked in the background, and Sam quickly let go.

"Um, it's good to see you awake..." Sam said, blushing very slightly.

"You okay, dude?" Tucker asked Danny, throwing something of a triumphant_ I-know-you-like-him_ glance at Sam.

"Well... I think I'm fine, but..." And Danny found himself telling them everything that had happened since he had flown out of the window to confront the griffin ghost, up until they had walked through the door.

"...So, what do you make of that?" Danny asked them as he finished.

"What if your dad's right? What if it is a ghost virus?" Tucker asked.

"If it's a ghost virus, than why is it affecting me?" Danny retorted.

"Hm, let's think for a moment," Sam said in sarcastic thoughtfulness. "Maybe because you're half ghost?"

"Generally, Sam, these things don't affect me _because_ I'm half ghost!" Danny said, throwing his hands in the air. Danny then gasped and turned around as his ghost sense went off.

"I am Technus! Ghost master of all things electronical, lord of all gadgetry..."

"Danny, maybe you shouldn't-" Sam began. But Danny had already gone ghost, and flown outside to confront Technus before she could finish.

"And still, as ever, master of incredibly long-winded introductions!" Danny shouted.

"It is you! Ghost child!" Technus shouted.

"Oh, good, you remember me," Danny muttered dryly. "So, why don't you enlighten me by shouting out your motives so you're distracted long enough for me to suck you into the Fenton Thermos?"

"I thought I had made it clear that I do that no longer!"

"Could've fooled me!"

"Why you little-"

Danny, however, had aimed a well-placed punch at Technus, so he didn't get to finish his sentence.

"Yaaaaaahhhhahhhhhhh!" he cried as he was flung across the sky, where he hit a building.

"Ha-had enough, T-T-Te-_c-cough cough_..." Danny rasped.

"I see you are not feeling well, child!" Technus shouted. "I, however, have fortunately remained untouched by the dreaded S-Si-Sickness..._c-cough_..."

Danny regained his composure slightly. "Um, you might want to rethink that."

"I-I... What is happening? I am not feeling... w-we-_c-cough_-well..." And with that, Technus fell limply out of the sky. Danny followed, diving downwards.

"Sickness?" he asked himself, hovering in the alley where Technus had fallen. "What sickness?"

"Danny!" Tucker and Sam cried at the same time, running towards him.

"Danny, are you all right?" Sam asked anxiously.

"Y-yeah... I-I'm-_c-cough cough_-f-f-fine..." Danny said weakly.

He collapsed, and had transformed back to normal before he had even hit the ground.

Tucker and Sam looked at Danny, looked at each other, and looked back at Danny again.

"I guess we'd better...take him home," Sam said, in a quiet, concerned voice.

* * *

Clockwork turned away from the Window of Time. 

"Well? Are you not going to-" an Observant began. Clockwork cut him off.

"Yes, of course I am." The Master of Time picked up a small, wrapped package from a table and studied it. "But not just yet."

"But, when will you-" the second Observant broke in. Clockwork cut him off as well.

"Soon," he said softly, replacing the package upon the table. "Very soon..."

Clockwork turned away from them, gripped his staff tighter, and coughed, ever so slightly.

* * *

Danny groaned and opened his eyes to find Tucker and Sam staring anxiously down at him. He was lying on his bed this time, though. 

"Tucker? Sam? What are you doing here?" he asked.

"You collapsed yesterday," Sam said.

"Yesterday!" Danny exclaimed, sitting up suddenly.

"Yeah, Sam was worried sick about you..." Tucker said. He stopped quickly at the venomous look Sam gave him.

Danny looked between them for a few seconds. Then he said, quite simply, "I'm hungry."

He got off of the bed. His head swam for a few moments, eyes blurring from getting up so suddenly. But his vision cleared, and his legs were steady, so he went downstairs to get something to eat. Tucker and Sam quickly followed.

A few seconds later, they were in the kitchen, Danny deciding what he wanted to eat.

The doorbell rang.

"I'll get it," he said, trying to get away from Tucker and Sam, who were now arguing whether or not meat or salad would help Danny get better quicker.

Danny opened the door. He gasped, and narrowed his suddenly green-tinged eyes, throwing the door open to reveal the man who was standing there, smiling benignly.

"_VLAD?_"

* * *

Oooh... I'm just downright cruel to you with these cliffhangers, aren't I? Maybe I have cliffhanger-itis.

Anyway, I just had to put Vladdy in there. Why? You'll see why... ;) And, what? You didn't expect me to bring Clockwork back?

Heheh... Well, I'll try to update as soon as I possibly can. I actually know what direction I'm going with this next chapter; this one was a sort of bridge from last chapter to the next one. Bleh, I hate chapters like that. So hard to write...

Ever suspenseful,  
-E.P.


	7. Chapter 6: The Sleeping Sickness

Hello everyone.

Okay, first I must apologize for this late update…It's been almost a week! So I'll explain myself. Report cards came out, and although the lowest grade I had was a B, I had some missing assignments, and my parents weren't exactly happy. So I was grounded. Bleh. But hey, it was geometry! Ekk… Well, anyway, I'm sorry it took so long. Fortunately, search and rescue teams found my train of thought, so I'll be back on track soon enough here!

Anyway, the reviewers! Who all seemed to like Vlad for some reason. oO Go figure.

**Silverstagbeauty: **Heheh… I'm not sure if this counts as 'very soon', but um… Yeah. Anyway, I'm sorry, I haven't read your story yet. Actually, I haven't even checked my email for about a week, so, uh, yeah. Heheh…

**DannysGirlForever:** HEHEH! WRITING IN ALL CAPS IS FUN! WHEE! Um, yes, well, anyway…Thank you! Ashleigh, is it? Yes, thank you Ashleigh!

**MixedBerry: **Heheh, yeah. I think I was trying to write 'exemptify', despite the fact that it isn't a word, and spelled it wrong. It should have been 'exempt', but thanks for catching that for me. And thank you for the review. And compliments. And I think that's the first bit of advice anyone has given me on this story so far… Or any of my stories! You should win an award… The Only Person Who Actually Found Something Wrong With My Story Award! Yay!

**PhantomKat7:** Yes, I wasn't originally intending Vlad to be in the story either. But then I got this really good idea for a plot complication, and Vlad worked really well to usher in this next scene.

**GIR's Cupcake:** You knew Vlad would show up? Have you been sending me subliminal messages to put him in there? Hmm… Ah well. Another long review. Aw, for the praise! But I'm not even sure how I write for Clockwork myself… Come to think of it, I could write for just about any character I wanted to. Getting the feel that a character knows something the reader doesn't is one of the techniques to get people to want to read the story even more. Heh, and it works, too!

**ERZLO:** Vlad is in a lot of DP fanfictions, mostly because he is the main villain for the show. But at least I have an actual reason for Vlad showing up, one which I will hopefully remember to illustrate at some point in this story.

**purpledog100: **(_puts on snorkel and mask_) Heh, well, I tried with the updating the next chapter soon-thing. But I've said it before and I'll say it again: It's a good thing I can swim!

**good story: **Um, question. Did you read my answer to your last review? Oh well. Danny will be fine…somewhat. I'm not revealing the ending now! That would be awful:o Heheh… Anyway… I can't kill off the main character. I don't think.

**Crazyvi: **Yeah, everyone just about has their own little thing like that. I say 'narf' and add –ness to the ends of words a lot. But anyway… Thanks for the review, and here's the chapter!

**phantom101: **Hey, you've just won my Shortest Review Ever Award! Yay! I'm giving out lots of awards today. Oh well. Remember to wear oven mitts when handling hot cliffhangers :P

**CrazyCosmoFan: **Everyone loves Vlad. Heheh… bouncy bouncy bouncy…

Okay, late update explained… check. Reviewers replied to… check. Disclaimer…(_looks below_)…check. Now all that's left is the story! (For the record, everyone, Vlad is hard to write for! Let's hope I did a good job…)

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.

* * *

Chapter 6: The Sleeping Sickness

* * *

Danny glared at Vlad, and quickly regained his composure.

"Hello, Plasmius. And, goodbye, Plasmius!" he growled as he slammed the door in the middle-aged millionaire's face.

The doorbell rang again, in a most persistent way. Danny glared and the door and stomped off, eyes still an angry shade of green.

"Hey, Danny, who was that at the door?" Sam asked as he reentered the kitchen.

"No one," Danny said angrily. The doorbell rang again, more persistently than ever, and Danny glared over his shoulder.

"Um, is something wrong?" Tucker asked.

"No! Nothing's wrong. What makes you say that?" Danny snarled, kicking a chair so hard that one of the legs broke off and the chair tipped over. The doorbell rang several times in a row, and Danny's parents ran up from their laboratory to get the door.

"Hello, V-man!" Danny heard his father exclaim.

"Ah, Jack, how nice to see you!" Danny detected the sarcasm in Vlad's voice, although he doubted his father did.

Tucker and Sam rolled their eyes. "Vlad," they said in unison.

"Hey, kids, guess who's here!" a loud and excited voice called.

"Hm, a lonely middle-aged millionaire who would be well advised to get a cat?" Danny answered sarcastically, walking into the hallway.

"No! It's our old friend, Vlad!" Jack said happily, gesturing in Vlad's direction.

"I can see the 'old', but I'm not sure if I can go with the whole 'friend' part," Danny muttered. "Um, and if you need me, which you shouldn't, I'll be up in my room, doing, um... something very important for, uh, school, and I don't want to be interrupted!" And with that, Danny hurried up the stairs accompanied by Tucker and Sam.

Jazz met them on the stairs.

"What are you three running up here for?" she asked, glancing downstairs, where she saw Vlad talking politely to her parents. "Wait, Danny, didn't you say Vlad was-?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. In that case, I'll join you!" she said, following them quickly up the stairs.

"Anyway, Vlad, why don't you come inside?" Maddie asked warmly. "So, what brings you here?"

Danny paused and leaned over the banister. Why was Vlad here, anyway?

"Why, Maddie, when I heard Daniel was ill I came right away! I have lately found myself quite concerned with the safety of the family of my dear old friends."

Danny sneezed at this point, making his entire body invisible by accident, or perhaps from the force of the sneeze. In any case, Vlad happened to glance up towards the balcony in time to see. He raised an eyebrow smugly at his young foe.

"Well, we're glad you're concerned," Maddie replied, oblivious to anything that was happening upstairs, "but there's really no reason to-"

"Aw, come on. The last time he was here we were attacked by ghosts. Which was pretty cool, but we didn't get to spend much time together," Jack pleaded.

"I don't know..."

"Oh, pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleeeeeeease!" Jack begged, falling to his knees and clasping his hands.

"Oh, all right," she said, in a tone of voice that said quite clearly that had been her original intention. "Now, why don't you come into the living room, Vlad?"

"Why, of course," Vlad replied elegantly, with a sweeping bow to hide his triumphant smile.

"C'mon, V-man, I want to show you the Fenton Peeler!" Jack shouted gleefully, rushing into the living room. Vlad followed, but...

"OW!" he shouted suddenly, hopping upon one foot as if he had stubbed his toe. The half-ghost millionaire glared up a the balcony, where a pair of green eyes smirked at him from over the banister.

* * *

"Okay, I'd like a straight answer, Vlad," Danny demanded, confronting the man later that evening in his parent's laboratory. "What are you doing here?" 

"Couldn't I ask you the same thing?" Vlad smirked, "Inviso-bill?"

The glare that Danny always wore when he was in the presence of this particular person deepened from blue to green as he crossed his arms. "According to the general public, Inviso-bill is Danny Phantom's evil and insignia-less twin. Now will you answer my question already?"

It seemed that Danny's question would never get answered. No less than two figures appeared in thin air, somewhere in between the two halfas. He drew a rare reaction of surprise from Vlad, and a mirrored expression from Danny.

Danny spoke first. "Who are you?" he asked threateningly, eyeing their long, sweeping robes, their creepy, ocular heads, and the small package one was carrying.

"We are the Observants," the figures said at the same time, as if it explained everything.

"Meaning...?" Danny prompted.

"We have been sent to ensure the safety of the Ghost Zone," the Observant on the left said.

"Sent? By whom?" Vlad asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Clockwork," the Observant on the right answered.

"Clockwork! But, why couldn't he just come see me himself?" Danny asked with surprise.

"He cannot come," the first Observant replied.

"Why not? Hang on... This doesn't have anything to do with... you know... Does it?" Danny asked, with a sudden jolt of fear.

"No. Your future self remains locked in Clockwork's abode," the second Observant answered, with a tone of voice that indicated he did not approve of this set up.

"Then why can't he-?" Danny began, but was cut off by the first Observant.

"Let us say that he is unwell," he stated.

"He has charged us with a task," the second Observant added. "A task to present you with this."

And with that, he offered the package he had been carrying to Danny. Danny stared at it, but did not take it.

"What do you mean, 'unwell'?" he asked, eyeing the first Observant.

"He had fallen victim to the Sickness, as we had warned him against," he explained.

"Sickness? Okay, so could someone here actually tell me what this whole 'Sickness' thing is about?" Danny said irritably.

"You do not know?" the second Observant said with a note of surprise, still holding the package that Danny had refused to accept.

"If I knew, I wouldn't be asking you," he replied sharply. "So what is it?"

"The Sleeping Sickness," the first Observant began, "is an ancient malady. Ages ago, it was created by a sorcerer who wished to destroy all who opposed him."

"The Sickness was a devious design," the other Observant continued. "It would infect any who came in contact with it. The Sickness spread faster than any mortal illness, although no one understands why. It broke through the barrier that ghosts had against such things, for no ghost has ever been ailed by disease of any sort."

"It was intended to prove fatal," the Observant on the left continued, "but ghosts could not die. So the Sickness did the next best thing: it sent all who were touched by it into an irreversible slumber."

"This phase of the illness," the second continued, "was known as the Sleeping Death, and it gave the Sickness its name. The Sleeping Sickness was dreaded throughout the Ghost Zone."

"But the Sickness had to be stopped," the other Observant picked up where his brother had left off. "And so, a group of the most powerful ancient ghosts put a stop to it. They formed a Council, with the intent of eliminating the disease."

"And they did," the second Observant continued. "To this day, no one knows how they did it, except they themselves, and the Council is long gone now. The only record of the events is in this book." He held up the package, which was indeed an old book, with a grayed cover and frayed edges.

"And what does this have to do with me?" Danny asked. He felt slightly bewildered by it all.

"The Sleeping Sickness has returned," the first Observant replied. "The only record is contained in this book, and none can read it. But for some reason, Clockwork was certain that _you_ would be able to find the cure." Danny looked again at the pro-offered book, then reached out his hands hesitantly, and took it. The book was much heavier than it looked, and icy cold; his fingers felt numb, and he had been holding if for only a few seconds. Danny looked down at the battered cover, then back up at the Observants.

"How am I supposed to find the cure? And why should I?" he asked suspiciously.

"Because, if you do not," the second Observant answered, "then you will have condemned the Ghost Zone to destruction, and sealed your own fate as well." Danny was speechless at this remark.

The first Observant continued when Danny did not speak. "Once you have found the cure, Clockwork requests that you come to his abode," he said, putting a pendant hanging from a blue ribbon around Danny's neck. "He said that you would know where to find him."

"Good luck, and farewell," the second Observant said.

"Remember, Danny Phantom, you are our only hope." Both Observants bowed, and disappeared.

Danny looked at the medallion. It was one of Clockwork's time medallions, gold, gear-shaped, and bearing an elegant CW emblem. He then looked at the book in his hands.

"Danny?" a voice said timidly from the door. He turned to see who had spoken. It was Sam. She was standing there with Tucker and Jazz, and all three had such horrorstruck expressions it was clear that they had heard the whole thing.

Danny looked back down at the book, and opened it to the first page. The pages were yellowed and crackled like old leaves when he turned them.

But the page was written on entirely with odd symbols, in vivid green ink that seemed to withstand the aging the rest of the book had undergone. Danny looked up, with a very frightened and determined expression in his eyes.

"Daniel?" Vlad asked softly, and Danny looked up; he had forgotten he was there. Danny looked back down at the page. He flipped through the book, and found that every page was covered in green characters. But Danny got a shock when he reached the final page.

The characters here were so familiar that Danny knew them by heart. The writing mirrored that on the box lid he had found. Danny swallowed hard and looked up at Tucker, Sam, Jazz, and Vlad.

"Jazz? What do you know... about viruses?"

* * *

Well, that's my chapter! It's a little short, but… I really need to stop with the cliffhangers, don't I? (_slaps self_)

Anyway, as I said, I'm sorry it took so long for me to update! I'll compensate by trying to have this up by next Monday…or hopefully Tuesday at the latest. Well, less than a week, anyway.

Eternally sorry for taking so long to update and promising to get the next segment up ASAP,  
-E.P.


	8. Chapter 7: Raising the Stakes

You know, I've always wondered something about Danny's eye color(s). Is it just a random coincidence that they (meaning whoever controls the color of Danny's eyes) just wanted to express Danny as particularly angry by causing his eyes turn green, or is it a subtle statement about those people with blue eyes that can be blue or green depending on what they're wearing? Hmm...

I really come up with some strange comments. I wonder why... Oh well. Anyway... I believe I owe some reviewers replies and such and such. And such ;)

**Silverstagbeauty: **Oh! I don't want that on my conscience!

**leilanisangel: **Good, good… It's supposed to make sense!

**SF:** Chapter 6 and 7? Hm… Heheh, well, I'm glad you love my story! Why else would you review? Um, on second thought, don't answer that ;) And no, I don't do this to all of my readers; you guys are just the exception. But I do it because I luv you guys so much! (_hugs readers_) Sorry, just one of those moments… ;P 

**Ytak: **Thank you! But as for your question… It's a little confusing, I must admit. It's mentioned in the, ah, the second paragraph of this chapter. The point I'm trying to make is that Danny can at least recognize the language when he hasn't EVER seen it before. He **_CAN'T_** read it, but subconsciously, he sorta-kinda can. And I've just confused myself. Maybe I should just stick with Japanese… (Which, coincidentally, has absolutely nothing to do with this story.) Anyway, for all clarification purposes: DANNY CANNOT UNDERSTAND THE LANGUAGE!

**DannysGirlForever: **Thank you! Heheh, and you're right; I used all caps above and I think it really did get my point across.

**Moonbay: **I like cliffhangers too… Even when _I'm_ the poor reader who is forced to endure cliffhangers, I still luv them.

**PhantomKat7: **I did? Really? Yay! I was having some trepidation about whether or not I did him correctly. It's wonderful to know I did a good job!

**CrazyCosmoFan: **Thanks. I can just imagine Jack doing that. Actually, he probably has done that at some point in an episode and I forgot about it. Heheh… And ditto to the review :)

**phantomgirl07/phantom101: **Yay! Now how many people have told me how much they like this story so far? Why if I had a nickel (named Phillip, of course!) for every time someone said that… I'd be richer than Vlad.

**Juanis: **Mm-hm. Short chapters annoy me. But likewise, hugely long chapters are as bad. Too many events happen and make it hard to review. My happy medium is somewhere over 2000 words and under 4000.

**good story: **I'm going to put chapter 8 up… RIGHT NOW! Yay! Let us celebrate with chocolate cake!

**Eternally-Forgotten:** You're not alone on that, my friend. Thank you, thank you, thank you! (What else can I say?) Oh, um, gracias, and arigatou gozaimasu! (note: phonetically pronounced ah-ree-gah-toe go-zai-mahs) 

**ModernDayPrayerxx: **Thanks. And I'm on your C2 list? Really? Yay! I'm on a C2 list! And although I really only have the vaguest idea of what that is… YAAAAAAAAAAY!

Drowned in the reviews again. Good thing I hired a lifeguard, hm? Anyway, for the record, I now have over 60 reviews, over 1200 hits, 14 favorites, 22 story alerts, and I'm on a C2 list. I am officially shocked that my story has been loved that much and that warmly accepted. (_hugs readers_) I luv you guys!

Anyway, here is chapter 7; and relatively cliffhanger-less it is. Celebrate while it lasts ;)

Disclaimer: I don't own DP... Blah blah blah... How many of you are actually bothering to read this anymore?

* * *

Chapter 7: Raising the Stakes

* * *

Danny could not sleep. Who would have been able to sleep, having just been told that they needed to solve a mystery to save an entire dimension? 

Instead, he flipped through the book for what seemed like the hundredth time. He could not read a single word, make sense of a single character, but it was still there; that irking, nagging feeling that he had seen this somewhere before...

But he hadn't. The characters inscribed upon the pages were as alien to him as Russian, or some other foreign language he did not know. For all he knew it could be Chinese. So why on earth had Clockwork thought that he would be able to understand this?

Danny slammed the book shut with the finality of a reader closing a book halfway through; not yet having pieced together the plot, but still knowing that he would inevitably return to it later. He placed it upon his desk, beside the gray lid of the box. Danny gave it a scrutinizing glare, but got up and plodded over to the door. He intended to get a glass of water, or something. Finding dead ends everywhere he looked made him thirsty, and well, to be honest, he just wanted an excuse to get up and walk around.

He nearly walked into Vlad, from a combination of drowsiness and not expecting to find anyone in the hallway at this time of night. And by nearly, I mean: neither of them were really paying much attention, but they both became intangible from sheer instinct, and thus walked into one another.

Or, at least Vlad had. Danny had fallen to the floor, and sat there trying to stop coughing uncontrollably. He had by now decided that, apart from the traditional symptoms of a cold, the ghost virus was causing his usually quite good subconscious control over his powers to waver, particularly when he coughed or sneezed.

The archenemy himself was also on the floor, wearing a bathrobe and with a book on knitting lying half-open next to him. Danny might have found the situation hilarious had he not been coughing so hard, particularly as Vlad was wearing bunny slippers in a shade of pink that would have made Sam retch.

Danny managed to regain control of his small coughing fit, and the ever-annoying power of intangibility, and clambered to his feet, his throat feeling very sore.

Vlad did likewise, and retrieved his book from the ground and tucked it under one arm. Danny would have laughed then, but he was afraid he would begin coughing again, so he allowed himself a smirk in the general direction of the Sam-offending slippers.

Vlad glanced down at his feet, and Danny could have sworn he'd blushed. Not the whole classic face turning red from embarrassment, but there was definitely more pink color in his cheeks than he could remember.

But Vlad now looked at him with something reminiscent of grave concern in his eyes.

"Daniel, could I talk to you for a moment?"

Despite the serious tone in his voice, Danny's retort tumbled out before he could stop it.

"Can I have about fifteen witnesses, including my mom?" Danny sighed and folded his arms in a stubbornly angry way, and followed his statement quickly before his foe could reply. "Fine. But first _you_ tell me why you came here in the first place."

Vlad wondered for a moment which was more disconcerting to be glared at with: cold, furious green eyes or icy, penetrating blue eyes. Considering the look Danny was giving him now, he decided upon the latter.

"I... Well, I, ah-" but he was saved from a lot of intelligible stammering by a loud grunt from the open door to Danny's parents' room.

"Oh, _darn it_, not here!" Danny said hurriedly, and pushed Vlad into his own room. Danny closed the door, with the same feeling of a person locking himself in with a hungry tiger. He wondered vaguely if this was how Daniel had felt when he had been shoved into the lion's den; then mentally kicked himself as he remembered his own name was Daniel.

"Okay. So why did you show up randomly at my door? This whole Sleeping Sickness thing isn't _your_ fault, is it?" Danny said in the accusing tone of a prosecuting attorney interrogating the suspect.

"I- no! Why on earth would you-?" Vlad began. He was swiftly cut off by an angry Danny.

"Maybe because the whole Pariah Dark thing was your fault, not to mention half of all the other ghosts I've fought!"

"Daniel, listen to me! I had no intention of unleashing something that could potentially harm myself. I only came because I was concerned about your condition, and whether or not it had the capability to inflict myself as well."

"And because you thought you would score points with my mom," Danny added in a fierce mutter.

"Well, that too," Vlad admitted. Danny glared, and he decided to continue. "Now, Daniel, there is something I would like to ask you." He flinched as though expecting Danny to lash out with a whip, but Danny did not say anything (although he clearly wanted to, if anything could be judged from the look on his face) he continued. "Ah, yes, those Observant characters. One of them mentioned something along the lines of, 'Your future self remains locked in Clockwork's abode'. Now, what does that mean?"

Danny let out his breath in a long, sorrowful sigh. The vision that had only recently stopped haunting his nightmares came back to him now, with startling clarity. His parents, sister, friends, and teacher, tied to a vat of highly combustible Nasty Sauce which was slowly heating towards the temperature which was not only the boiling point, but the exploding point as well.

It also brought another image to his mind. Vlad, ten years older and reduced to living meagerly in an abandoned cave...

Vlad eyed Danny; he was now strangely quiet and had a shadowed look in his eyes that he had never seen there before. It looked somewhat guilty, sad, and angry...

Danny finally spoke, and when he did, he was quoting the same words that Vlad himself had spoken in that cave.

"Some things are better left unsaid."

Vlad raised his eyebrows inquiringly, but didn't say anything. Danny's tone of voice had said quite plainly that he would say no more than that. But the position was now very uncomfortable, and Vlad had not answered more for the reason of not having anything to say than to respect Danny's wishes of not inquiring further. The best thing to do in any situation like this was usually to change the subject (and fast), but Vlad was at a loss for anything to say.

He was saved the trouble of having to think of a new subject, but it was a bittersweet victory. Vlad began coughing, in the horrible, rasping way that Danny had been for the past two days...

"Uh oh," Danny said, and then added, despite himself, "Are you okay?"

Vlad nodded, and the coughing subsided. But Danny still found himself unnerved, and couldn't help thinking that Vlad was the latest victim of the Sleeping Sickness. He was beginning to understand why ghosts dreaded it.

More for something to do than anything else, he walked over to the desk where the book and lid were currently residing. But there was something different about that lid, and he couldn't put his finger upon it... Almost as if there was more writing upon in than had been when he had first found it...

But, no. That was impossible. No one had written on the lid since Danny had found it, and besides, it wasn't as if anyone he knew could actually write in that language. But the difference was enough to want him to make sure. Danny wished he had a record of what the lid had said last Saturday...

But then he realized: he _did _have a record! And perhaps Monday was a bit after Saturday, but still...

Danny fished out the crinkled piece of paper out of his pocket. It was entitled 'Notes- Science', and was written half in black ink and half in green ink. But he didn't care about that; all that mattered were the nineteenth and twentieth lines. He placed the paper next to the lid, and compared them.

Sure enough, the lid had much more writing on it than the paper. In fact, there were twelve whole more sections of the symbols, sections which Danny supposed could be called words. They were arranged somewhat like this:

XXXXXXX  
XXXXXXXX  
XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX  
XXXXXXX  
XXX XXXXX  
XXXXX XXXXXXX  
XXXXXXX  
XXXX XXXXXXXX

Danny shook his head. Great. Just another mystery to add to all the rest of the mysteries he was already trying to solve. But, still...He supposed that this new puzzle still could be counted as a clue of sorts, and might help him solve another more pressing of those mysteries: how to cure the Sleeping Sickness.

Vlad was looking curiously over his shoulder. For the second time that day, Danny had forgotten he was there.

"Why is it in green? You didn't...write this, did you, Daniel?" he asked quizzically

Danny sighed and looked at the paper; all previous tension was forgotten.

"Yeah, I wrote it. But that's the least of our problems." Danny sighed again and looked up. "I hope Jazz is still awake."

* * *

Jazz, as it turned out, was still wide-awake. They found her at her desk, reading through a college textbook at a furious pace. By the size of the pile at her feet on the floor and the neat stack on her desk, it was clear that this was not her first book, nor was it the last she would read that night. 

"Um, Jazz? Found anything yet?" Danny asked, entering the room with Vlad trailing behind. Jazz looked up at Danny, holding his science notes and the gray lid, and at Vlad and his bunny slippers.

"Not really. Unless you have pneumonia, influenza, malaria, yellow fever, small pox, bronchitis-" she stopped herself before she had recited the entire content of the small pile of books clustered around her feet. "Well, I can say this much for sure," she said, closing the book definitely and laying it upon the desk. "It's not any disease known to mankind."

"Wow, there was no way I could have ever figured that out on my own," Danny said sarcastically. "Here, Jazz, what do you make of this?"

Danny handed her the notes and lid, pointing out what he had just discovered. As Jazz observed this more closely in silence, it occurred to him that he had been pointing out a lot of things regarding these notes lately. He looked around mildly at Jazz's room before she sighed and put the paper aside.

"To tell you the truth...I have no idea," she said. Vlad sneezed, becoming momentarily invisible as he did so. Jazz blinked, and narrowed her eyes thoughtfully.

"You're half ghost too, right Mr. Masters?" she asked. Vlad nodded, with a sidelong glance at Danny.

"And have you, hm, 'gone ghost', for lack of a better term, since you arrived here?"

He shook his head, supplemented with a firm "No," from Danny.

"Danny, how would you-? Oh, never mind," she said. It was a few moments before she spoke again.

"Well, if I'm right-"

"-And you always are," Danny muttered. Jazz glared and continued.

"If I'm right, then I'm pretty sure that this Sleeping Sickness isn't too much different from other diseases. Well, except for the fact that it's a ghost disease. But it, like other viruses, has the capability to mutate. Meaning that, because it has infected you, Danny, and you're half ghost, it will have the capability to mutate to a point where it can infect humans as well. Vlad's the proof of that beginning, although hopefully it will take a bit longer to infect anyone else, because he's half ghost too."

"And your point is, Jazz?" Danny asked.

"Well, those Observant guys said something about it... that 'It was intended to prove fatal, but ghosts could not die. So the Sickness did the next best thing: it sent all who were touched by it into an irreversible slumber.'"

"How do you guys remember that word for word?" Danny asked bemusedly. Jazz rolled her eyes and continued.

"Anyway, the only reason it was not fatal was because ghosts could not die. And the mutation of this strain of the virus shouldn't change that aspect. In a normal human, it could prove fatal."

Silence met this remark. And then...

"And what about us?" Danny asked, with a nod of his head to indicate Vlad and himself.

"I'm not sure. But I don't see why the situation would be any different."

"So you mean that, if I don't find the cure..." Danny couldn't bring himself to finish.

"We'll find it," Jazz said confidently. "Danny, I've seen you fight all those ghosts...Pariah Dark included... and you've never lost before. You'll win this time too, I know it."

Danny smiled at his sister's reply. "Thanks, Jazz. But, all those times before... I was fighting something that I could see, something I could touch, something I could understand..."

"And it's really easy to fight invisible and intangible beings, I'm sure, but you can't fight something you can't see and can't touch," Jazz said, with mock seriousness, the corners of her mouth twitching upward slightly.

"I- okay, okay, Jazz..." Danny said in defeat. He yawned widely. "I might as well go to bed now..."

Jazz nodded her approval. "Good idea. Ghost sickness or not, you should still get plenty of sleep and drink plenty of fluids."

Danny left her room, and Vlad left her room, and Jazz turned out the light.

It wasn't until Danny had clambered into bed, flicked the light off, and turned over to his side that he remembered: he never did get that glass of water.

Danny sighed and rolled over, closed his eyes, and drifted into sleep.

But at this time, at least,he would awake the next day.

* * *

What the-? Okay, something's missing here. Could it be... a cliffhanger? Oh my gosh, no cliffhanger! AHHHH! It's a sign of the apocalypse! Run! 

Oh, but I did do some serious foreshadowing at the end there. But NOT a cliffhanger. So let us celebrate while it lasts!

So, for whatever reason, I had to add a whole bunch of TUE stuff in there. Why? I do not know. But do you honestly think that Vlad would hear about Danny's evil future self and not investigate?

Anyway, speaking of Vlad… particularly, Vlad in pink bunny slippers... I just couldn't resist! It's like the mustache. Heheh, sorry... I just like making fun of the bad guys. I could put evil Danny in a fuzzy pink bunny costume with floppity ears if he were in this story. And he isn't, but just imagine that for a second! (Note that I hate people calling him Dan Phantom- my grandpa's first name is Dan and I resent that.)

Okay... ranting off track... Bad penguin!

Anyway... Thanksgiving weekend is fast approaching, meaning a whole lot of free time for me! Meaning that I will have extra time to work on the next chapter! Meaning that it should come very soon! And I'm beginning to wonder why I've been ending all of these sentences in exclamation marks! Ahh! I can't stop! Why can't I stop writing in exclamation marks!

Exclaimably randomly hyperly!  
-E.P. (!)


	9. Chapter 8: Decoding

Hello again, my devoted readers!

As promised, my chapter… But first, something important to get over with…

**From this point on, I will only be replying to signed reviews! Unsigned reviews will not be replied to!**

This is because I don't want to go through more trouble than I have to for the purpose of replying… Yeah, I'm lazy, I know.

As of right now, I won't be blocking anonymous reviews. If I ever actually have the sense to do so, which would really just clear up this problem in a second and I wouldn't have to waste time typing this, I'll tell you all. So, pretty much, if you want a reply, please make it signed. If you don't want a reply, or just don't care, then feel free to review anonymously.More trouble than it's worth, really, and besides, wouldn't my time be better spent writing the next chapter?

Anyway, I'll be replying to the unsigned reviewers for the previous chapter, because you could have had no way of knowing that I would suddenly instate this random policy, right?

**Fuzzytoesocks: **Heheh, first I must say: love the name. And everyone loved Vlad in bunny slippers. But I kind of got that much about the eye thing; I was just wondering if someone said "Hey, let's make Danny's eyes turn green when he's angry!" _because_ of those people whose eyes change color depending on what they're wearing. Anyway, thanks!

**Rachel: **(_whistles_) Um, I didn't exactly have a cliffhanger in the last chapter... But, oh well. Glad you like it, and here is more like you asked!

Anyway, I still have managed to drown in reviews. And I'm now on a grand total of 2 C2's, and have much more than a somewhat vague idea of what they are. Heheh… Thanks, everyone, and I've sent out the replies to all of the signed reviews with the wonderful new replying feature. (Note that if you replied with a signed review and didn't receive a reply, fell free to hit me! I have a hard time keeping track…)

(_sighs_) Anyway, all that over with… I watched the Ultimate Enemy again yesterday, and had an argument with my TV. (Aw, come on! Where's the bunny suit, darn you! You really _are_ evil, to not humor me and wear a fuzzy pink bunny suit!) And I've also noticed, after watching them both back-to-back, that TUE is the DP equivalent of Channel Chasers. Well, except for the fact that future Timmy isn't exactly evil (or wearing a bunny costume), but you get the idea.

And on that subject… I drew evil Danny (who I've decided to call Phantom, because that's what a lot of the characters referred to him as) in a bunny costume. And I'm not that great at drawing… Okay, well, actually, I _am_ pretty good at drawing, but not DP-style, but I think it turned out very funny. And then I just had to write a whole bunch of random bunny-themed quotes beneath, such as 'What's up, doc?' and 'Uh-oh, somebody get the Holy Hand-Grenade!' My only regret is that I have no scanner, and cannot show you. (_sobs_)

Ugh, I just rambled for two whole paragraphs! Eek, is this a fanfiction or a ramble-fest? But on a more fic-related note, I've come up with a name for the ghost language! Yureigo. It's Japanese, which is really the only other language I know, and 'yurei' means 'ghost' and 'go' pretty much means language. Clever, aren't I?

Well, anyway, all rambling aside… I think I'm trying to make up for the lack of review replies by taking up the space with pointless stuff that you may or may not care about… Like what I'm doing right now. So here we have chapter eight (or chapter nine, if you count the prologue), and I'd better to get on with it before I write a whole page of random notes! (Ack, believe it or not, this actually _did_ take up a whole page! I really need to stay on track, don't I?)

Disclaimer: Ugh! Nine chapters in and I still have to write this? Well, I guess I don't exactly 'have' to, but… I don't own Danny Phantom.

* * *

Chapter 8: Decoding

* * *

Danny awoke, much thanks to the annoying ray of sunlight which was shedding golden light upon his face. When you are tired, sick, and have a handful of complicated mysteries to solve, having a bright light shining in your eyes is definitely not welcome. 

Danny rolled away from the golden pool of light, which was now left dripping upon his pillow, and very nearly rolled out of the bed as well. He caught himself at the last minute, and teetered there for half a second before finally sitting up, stretching, and clambering out of the bed.

He glanced at the clock, the red digital numbers of which were reading 10:47. He thought with a jolt that he was late for school, then remembered that his parents wouldn't allow him into school even if he wanted to go. Which he didn't.

It was probably all for the better, though, he thought as he pulled his shirt over his head. At least he would have extra time to work on finding a cure...

But first thing's first, and the reality that he had not eaten for over half a day caught up with him in a sharp twinge of hunger.

Danny emerged from his room, fully clothed and with his stomach growling. He trotted downstairs for breakfast, and was immediately bombarded by his parents (mostly his mom) with questions about how he was feeling.

Danny fended them off, which proved difficult without a long stick. He finally sat reluctantly at the table with a thermometer shoved in his mouth, which is not the best substitute for food when one is hungry.

His mom pulled the thermometer out of his mouth and peered at it intently.

"Now, this can't possibly be right!" she said. Danny leaned over for a glimpse at the thermometer, which read at 84.7 degrees Fahrenheit. He blinked and looked up, wondering how he would explain this away. The off-handed, "It's probably broken," was answered in the most unpleasant way: Danny was submitted to the thermometer being shoved in his mouth three more times. He was beginning to wonder whether the acrid after taste of metal would remain on his tongue forever.

"You know, maybe you're right," Maddie sighed as she placed the thermometer (now reading 82.3 degrees) upon the table. "I think it is broken."

"I'll get the Fenton Thermometer!" Jack exclaimed, jumping up to dash off and bring back the device.

"Jack, we don't have a Fenton Thermometer," Maddie reminded him.

"Oh," her husband replied, pausing in mid-step and looking crestfallen. Then he brightened up. "Well, I guess I'll just have to make one, then!"

"Jack! Wait! I'll come with you!" she cried, leaping up herself and pulling the blue hood and red lensed goggles over her head. They dashed down to their laboratory, leaving Danny blinking, wondering with surprise, _They actually don't have a Fenton Thermometer?

* * *

_

Danny was up in his room five minutes later, a bowl of cereal and a glass of milk upon his desk, and the computer slowly starting up.

And then Danny was looking through that website on the language again. He had to start somewhere, and that looked as good as any place. He finally came to a section at the bottom of the website, where he found a section entitled: All characters identified by language.

Seeing possibility here, Danny carefully copied down the characters, almost despite himself in green ectoplasmic ink.

Danny put the pen down after he had finished the last one, and studied the paper. He recognized quite a few of the characters from the lid itself. He numbered them absently, wondering if this was going to be useful at all, and if it wouldn't be better to take Robitussin with ectoplasm extract and hope it worked.

Danny stopped at the last character, with a small 26 beside it. And he felt a jolt of sudden realization: the alphabet had 26 letters. So if each one of these symbols stood for a letter, then he would be able to translate it into something he could remotely understand. He didn't want to think beyond that; probably all the words he managed to form would be complete gibberish. But at least it was something.

In fact, it was like a whole bunch of strings tied in knots. Each of the strings represented a different mystery. Each knot he untied, the closer he would be to solving it. And just by getting one string, one mystery, free, the others would become easier to untie.

The triumphant feeling of having solved a part of a puzzle was quickly dissolving, though, as he realized that he had no idea which symbols stood for which letter.

Danny took a bite of his breakfast, then picked up the book and opened it upon the desk. The first page contained three distinct sections of symbols; a group of three 'words' and a group of two 'words', and sandwiched in between were three words, in much larger and bold text than the others on the page.

xxx xxxxxxxxxx xx  
**XXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX**  
xx xxxxxxxxx

Danny decided that, if anywhere, here would be the place to start. He could assume that this was a title of the book. Then he had an idea. It was vague, and didn't make any sense, and later Danny could not explain why he had even thought of it. It was more pure instinct than anything.

He wrote down the words 'The Sleeping Sickness' underneath the list on his piece of paper. Then he scribbled down the three largest words from the book underneath that, making sure that each symbol was aligned underneath the letters. And the result was either a coincidence, or the first steps towards solving this puzzle.

'The' had three letters, and three symbols were matched under that word. Similarly, 'Sleeping' was matched perfectly with eight characters, as was 'Sickness'. Danny looked back up at the list, and matched the letters T, H, E, S, L, P, I, N, G, C, and K with the corresponding symbols. And it all fit. The S in sleeping and the three S's in sickness were all represented by the same character. The same was true with the E's, I's, and N's; the only letters to occur more than once in these three words.

It wasn't a language.

It was a code.

Danny applied this code to the remaining five words on the page, and came up with this translation:

THE CHxxNxLxGx xx  
**THE SLEEPING SICKNESS**  
xx CLxCKxxxK

The code didn't seem to distinguish between capital and lowercase letters, but that didn't exactly matter. He had eleven letters out of twenty-six accounted for, which was quite an accomplishment. Danny ate some more of his cereal, then decided it was time to decode the remaining fifteen symbols.

He pulled the gray lid towards him, unable to guess anything else from the letters upon the first page. It contained a long list of characters, and Danny didn't feel like writing them all out. Instead, he felt it was reasonable to translate the characters upon the box that had not been there that previous Monday.

SKXLKEX  
XEXTXXNX  
PENELXPE SPECTXX  
GXIXXIN  
XXX GHXST  
XXNNX PHXNTXX  
TECHNXS  
XLXX PLXSXIXS

Danny groaned. Only more mysteries. He needed to find another word he could guess at that had different characters, or one that had only a few letters missing from it, so he could figure out the rest of the word easily. It was back to the book for him.

He could figure out nothing more from the first page, so Danny turned the page, to be confronted by more confusing symbols, some of which he recognized by now.

_THEXE IS XNLX XNE XISEXSE THXT HXS XEEN KNXXN TX INXECT GHXSTKINX. IT IS KNXXN XS THT SLEEPING SICKNESS, THE XXEXXEX XXXLICTIXN THXT STXIKES XXXN XLL XHX CXXE IN CXNTXCT XITH IT. THIS CHXXNXLXXX HXS THXS XEEN SCXIXEX XXX THE SXLE PXXPXSE XX KEEPING THIS XXLXXX XT XXX, SHXXLX EXEX IT STXIKE XXXIN, XXX THXSE XHX XXIL TX LEXXN HISTXXX XXE XXXXEX TO XEPEXT IT._

Danny sighed as he finished translating the last known letter of the paragraph upon the page. There were a few complete words here, but not many. The best place to start was at the beginning. THEXE. The word was missing only one letter. So what was that letter? Danny wrote down all the words he could think of that were similar to THEXE, and came up with only two: 'these' and 'there'. Either the letter was an S, or it was an R. So which one was it?

It was then that Danny remembered that he already had a translation for S. Which eliminated 'these', and meant that the symbol must be an R.

Now he was getting somewhere. Danny scribbled an R down next to the R symbol, and replaced all of the R symbols with the letter on paragraph, title, and lid. He then sighed, and took another bite of his cereal. This could take a while.

* * *

It had taken Danny a full two hours to finish decoding the whole paragraph, title, and lid. Even so, he had yet to discover the symbols which corresponded to J, Q, X, and Z. He supposed he would be able to find those later, and he sat back and observed his work. 

The chronology of  
**The Sleeping Sickness**  
by Clockwork

Skulker  
Bertrand  
Penelope Spectra  
Griffin  
Box Ghost  
Danny Phantom  
Technus  
Vlad Plasmius

_There is only one disease that has been known to infect ghostkind. It is known as the Sleeping Sickness, the dreaded affliction that strikes down all who come in contact with it. This chronology has been scribed for the sole purpose of keeping this malady at bay, should ever it strike again, for those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it._

The paragraph was entirely useless; he already knew that much about the Sleeping Sickness anyway. Danny was surprised to find his own name, as well as so many other familiar names, upon the list from the lid.

But what surprised him the most was to find that the book had been written by Clockwork. If he had written the book himself, then why did he need Danny to find the cure? Couldn't he have just done so himself?

Danny sighed and flipped to the next page. His breakfast had been consumed an hour and a half earlier, but he was still somewhat hungry.

Danny groaned at the amount of symbols on this page. He pulled a notebook out of his backpack-he didn't really take notes in Algebra, anyway, and he would need much more than a single piece of paper to finish decoding the book. A lot more.

Danny took up the pen again and began translating the characters upon the page. It was going to be a long day.

* * *

Kitty sniffed wearily on the backseat of a motorcycle, her arms clasped tightly around Johnny's waist. 

"_Johnny_, I'm not feeling well! Can't we stop?" she whined.

"Aw, come on, Kitten! Don't you want revenge on that goody-two-shoes ghost boy?" he said. "Besides, there's the portal ahead!" he said, pointing. Kitty replied with a painful-sounding cough.

"Kitty, are you feelin' alright?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder at her. Johnny felt her go limp and her grip slip. He braked, and turned around to look at her.

"Kitty? _Kitten!_" he shouted. She wasn't moving, wasn't breathing... Oh, yeah, that's right; she's a ghost. But still, ghosts didn't just collapse...

"Kitty?" he asked again with concern. "Aw, come on! Kitty, wake-_c-cough cough_- wake up..." but he himself elapsed into a coughing fit.

And it wasn't soon until Johnny was lying limp beside Kitty, and lying just as limply beneath the motorcycle was the dark form of a shadow ghost.

* * *

Vlad poked his head into Danny's room, to find Danny bent over a book, the pen gripped in his hand moving furiously across a page halfway through a notebook. Vlad coughed, although it wasn't exactly a fake cough to make Danny aware of his presence. 

"Hello, Vlad," Danny said coldly, without looking up and the pen not faltering. Vlad blinked.

"How did you know it was me?" he asked, very taken aback.

"Jazz it at school, so're Tucker and Sam, and they'd ring the doorbell, and Mom and Dad are working on the, um, 'Fenton Thermometer', and nothing's blown up yet so they're obviously nowhere near done," Danny said very quickly, still writing.

Vlad blinked again; Daniel was becoming almost too perceptive for his own good. The room was silent, but for the steady scratch of the pen. After a few minutes had ticked by, Danny sighed.

"Okay. What d'you want now, Plasmius? In case you haven't noticed, I'm kind of busy," Danny said irritably.

"Busy doing what, may I ask?" the millionaire questioned, his curiosity aroused.

"Writing," Danny replied dryly. Vlad rolled his eyes and walked up to the desk to peer over Danny's shoulder. Danny was scribbling furiously upon the notebook, which he was over halfway through by now, and paused only to turn the page. Vlad raised an eyebrow.

"Daniel..." he said slowly, looking at the bright green letters that Danny had translated. Was it just him, or were they glowing slightly?

"What?" Danny grunted. He was very annoyed at Vlad, barging in like this. Didn't he have anything better to do?

Danny answered his own question. Vlad did have something better to do, although it depended upon how you defined 'better'. When it all came down to it, Vlad bothering Danny was probably better than Vlad flirting (or attempting to flirt, as the case may be) with Danny's mom, or Vlad plotting on how to kill Danny's dad.

"Ah, nothing, nothing..." Vlad answered, but it was clear that it most definitely was not 'nothing'.

"Hmmm..." Danny said, and paused again, tapping his pen against his chin as he tried to remember the corresponding letter for a particularly complicated character. Remembering, he wrote down the B and continued with the translation.

Vlad looked around the room. Didn't the boy ever actually _clean_? His gaze finally rested upon the strange gray lid, which he recalled from the previous night. He picked it up and looked it over.

It was just a small gray rectangle lined with red velvet, nothing special except for the fact that the whole top was covered with luminous green symbols, akin to the ones Danny was translating.

"Can I have that back?" Danny asked. He had actually stopped writing to look up at Vlad, and held out his hand expectantly. Vlad hesitated, then returned the lid. Danny looked at it for a few seconds, then Vlad watched as his expression turned from something bored and scathing to a look of surprise.

"_More_ letters?" he muttered quizzically to himself. Danny pulled out a sheet of paper; a sheet, which Vlad noted, contained not just Danny's name, but his own as well, and several of the ghosts he had consorted with at some point or another.

Danny translated the three new names at the bottom of the list, then put the pen down.

"Kitty and Johnny Thirteen, and his Shadow ghost..." he said. "But how...?"

"How what?" Vlad asked. He was just slightly more than completely baffled by now. "Daniel, what exactly are you doing?"

Danny sighed and turned around to face Vlad.

"Fine, if you really have to know... I'm translating that book into words recognizable as a human language."

"Why?" Vlad asked. Danny sighed again.

"You heard Jazz last night. I have to find a cure for this Sleeping Sickness. If I don't..." Danny didn't finish.

"So you're translating an entire book?" Vlad asked.

"Yeah. Well, it's not even that long, but..." Danny shrugged and turned back to the desk, then picked up the pen but didn't begin writing. "...I still have a long way to go," he finished, and turned the page of the book, and began writing again.

Vlad turned towards the door, gave a backwards glance towards Danny, then shut the door and left.

* * *

Um, not another non-cliffhanger-ending chapter! Wow, I'm on a roll! That's got to be some sort of record for me…

Anyway, I found this chapter somewhat tedious to write. I had originally followed every step that Danny took to figure out the code, but it was long, and pointless, and kind of boring. So I just sort of skipped over that part, and hoped it would still turn out all right.

Also, because I forgot to mention at the beginning of this chapter, I made a slight mistake involving a long list of X's in the previous chapter. I've fixed it, so it corresponds with this chapter. And speaking of those X's, I seriously hope that by now you should all have a good idea of what that writing on the lid represents... And if you don't even have at least the vaguest idea, then you should reread this chapter until you do.

Okay, so then… I have no idea when the next chapter will be up, as per usual. Hopefully before Friday, but I'll shoot for Wednesday, because the story is finally heading towards the 'finishing line'. The beginning of the end, if you will. And… I'm really eager to begin writing 'The Halfa That Time Forgot', so the sooner I finish this... the sooner I can start that.

So… See you all next update!  
-E.P.


	10. Chapter 9: The Cure That Wasn't There

Good (_insert time of day here_) everyone!

Now, I don't have any random notes to make here, so I'll just jump right in to the story-related notes.

One reviewer mentioned that Clockwork isn't on the lid when he's supposed to have been sick. Anyone else notice this? Well, whether or not you have, it wasn't a mistake. And I explain all in this chapter.

Anyway, now that we've gotten that straightened out, I think it's time for our story to continue. And if I missed any reviews, whack me with something, and it might renew my abysmal memory.

* * *

Chapter 9: The Cure That Wasn't There

* * *

"Hi, Danny! How're you feeling?" were Jazz's first words as she stepped over the threshold to Danny's bedroom. She was followed closely by Sam and Tucker, who were bearing a stack of books that appeared to express the full content of Danny's locker.

"Wha-? Oh, hi Jazz," Danny eyed the stack of books Tucker and Sam had just dropped on his bed with a loud _wham_ "That's not all homework, is it?" he asked apprehensively.

"Well, it depends how you define 'homework'..." Tucker said, followed by a groan from Danny.

"As if I haven't done enough writing today," he grumbled.

"Been working on that translation?" Sam asked. Danny nodded.

"Need any help?" she continued.

"Nope. I've already finished it," Danny answered truthfully.

"Really?" Jazz seemed more than mildly surprised.

"Yeah. Here," Danny showed them the notebook, which was now full, cover to cover. He then coughed; he still wasn't feeling well, and he had been phasing through random objects, or else becoming suddenly invisible, as a constant reminder throughout the day. In this case, the notebook had fallen to the floor.

Jazz retrieved the notebook and flipped through it curiously.

"Anything else happen today?" Sam asked.

"Well, let's see... I'm running a so-called fever of about eighty degrees Farenheit, and there are three more names on that little lid there."

"Names?" Jazz asked, looking up from the notebook. Danny nodded and handed her the sheet of paper containing the translation of the lid. Jazz blinked and looked at it for a few moments, with a look in her eyes she only had when trying to solve a complicated problem.

"So?" Danny asked.

"Well," Jazz began slowly. "You did tell me at some point that you had fought some sort of a griffin ghost right before you collapsed on Monday, right?"

Danny raised his eyebrows. "Yeah, that griffin-thing. Right before the Box Ghost... But what does this have to do with anything?"

Jazz smiled. "I think I know what this lid is all about."

"You do?" Danny asked. He, Tucker, and Sam moved closer.

"Yep. Okay, so first you fought that griffin, who collapsed. So what if he had the Sleeping Sickness? And then you found the Box Ghost, who also collapsed. Then _you_ collapse right after you throw him back in the Ghost Zone. Then, the next day, you fight Technus. And yesterday, Vlad got sick. See the pattern?" Jazz held the paper up so they could see it.

Skulker  
Bertrand  
Penelope Spectra  
Griffin  
Box Ghost  
Danny Phantom  
Technus  
Vlad Plasmius  
Kitty  
Johnny 13  
Shadow

They stared at it. Then Danny's eyes widened.

"Jazz, you don't think that this keeps track of who comes down with the Sleeping Sickness, do you?" Sam asked. Jazz nodded.

"And then Kitty, Johnny Thirteen, and his shadow ghost got sick, too?" Tucker asked. Jazz nodded again.

"Jazz, you're a genius!" Danny exclaimed, hugging her. Jazz blushed.

"Well, I- 'Genius' is a bit- I mean, Danny, anyone could have-" but she seemed unable to be entirely modest at the truthful suggestion.

"Okay, so now what do we do?" Sam asked.

"We find a cure, duh, Sam," Tucker answered her.

"How?" Danny asked. "We aren't doctors or chemists or anything, we'll need like a lab or something, fancy computers, and things like that, not to mention ghost-compatible equimptment... Where are we going to get stuff like that?"

"Let me see," Tucker pondered sarcastically, "Your parents are the world's leading ghost experts, they have their own laboratory filled with every sort of ghost-related equiptment known to mankind, and your sister is a super genius... Um, no idea."

Danny winced. "Uh, right. So how're we going to get my parents out of the lab?"

"How else?" Sam asked. "We lure them away."

"With what? It's not like we can just get a bunch of ghosts to-" Danny slapped himself in the forehead with his hand. "Right. Okay, so I'll lure them away."

"Danny, you're in no condition to be luring them away from anywhere. Besides, for some reason the Sleeping Sickness seems to affect you more drastically in ghost form," Jazz argued.

"So now what? We're just supposed to go ask some random ghost, who probably hates me anyway, to lure them away?"

"We could ask Vlad-" Jazz began.

"I'm not asking him to do anything," a green-eyed Danny said flatly with folded arms.

"Well, he might end up passing out while he's luring them away..."

"On second thought, let's go ask him," Danny said suddenly, grabbing Jazz's hand and pulling her after him.

* * *

"Daniel, what on earth makes you think I'll do this for you? I'm not feeling well myself, you know..." Vlad blew his nose in an embroidered handkerchief.

"Mr. Masters, it's the only way we'll be able to find a cure," Jazz protested.

Danny suddenly had an idea.

"You know, Vlad," he said craftily, "if we don't find a cure, Jazz said last night that the Sleeping Sickness will mutate and become deadly to humans."

"So?" Vlad asked, turning away from him

"...Including my mom," Danny finished. Vlad whirled around.

"Okay, I'll do it," he relented.

"Great," Danny said, "Now here's the plan..."

* * *

"Mr. Fenton! Come quick! A ghost's attacking Danny!" Tucker burst out breathlessly as he and Sam rushed down into the lab.

"What?" Jack boomed, looking up from his latest invention.

"Did you say a ghost?" Maddie asked.

"Er, yeah," Sam said. "Um, up here!" The Fenton parents followed her upstairs and outside.

Jazz slipped into the lab with Tucker, Danny's notebook grasped in her hands.

* * *

"Ow! Hey, I thought this was fake!" Danny said, rubbing his arm where the red ectoblast had collided with it. This was the same shoulder the griffin had slashed and the Box Ghost had jarred; neither injury had completly healed and, to be honest, those ectoblasts could really hurt.

"Well, I wouldn't have hit you if you weren't running around so much," Vlad Plasmius retorted angrily with crossed arms.

"Of course I'm supposed to be running around! If I were being attacked by a ghost, do you think I'd just stand around here doing nothing?"

"Yes, and I'm certain that arguing with the ghost is a plausible alternative," Vlad sarcastically answered. A green ectoblast hit him moments later.

"Um, right over here, Mr. and Mrs. Fenton!" Sam could be heard saying loudly.

"That's the signal!" Vlad hissed.

"I know it's the signal! What am I, four?" Danny asked angrily, then remembered what they were supposed to be doing. He sighed deeply, then opened him mouth and screamed, running in the opposite direction. Danny was annoyed by this; he'd much rather be hitting Vlad with a much-deserved Ghostly Wail.

"Aaah! Ghost!" he cried. Vlad shot a red blast, and purposefully missed.

"Stop right there, ghost!" Jack threatened.

"Oh no. If it isn't Jack Fenton, the world renowned ghost hunter. Whatever shall I do?" Vlad asked, his voice dripping in sarcasm.

"I'm warning you, ghost! Get away from our son!" Maddie cried.

"Aaaah, help!" Danny was keeping up a good act. "Save me from the ghost!" _Who still needs a cat, _he added to himself.

Vlad shot another ectoblast at him and missed.

"Aah-oops!" Danny said. He hadn't meant to trip. Plasmius flew down with a glowing hand.

"Okay, so go, lead them off on a wild goose chase," Danny muttered under his breath. "And if you kill my dad, then trust me, you will be sorry."

Vlad smiled menacingly and flew away from Danny, dodging blasts from the now-trigger happy Jack.

Danny sighed and got up, brushing himself off, then went and joined Sam.

"Think he'll keep his promise?" she asked.

"If he doesn't..." Danny threatened, glaring back after his archenemy. He didn't finish his sentence, and Sam couldn't say she had wanted to hear the end of it.

* * *

"Nothing," Jazz said, dropping the notebook down upon the desk in the lab. "Absolutely nothing about a cure. Are you sure you copied all of it, Danny?"

"I'm sure," he answered.

"Great, so now what're we supposed to do?" Tucker asked.

"I dunno." Danny picked the book up from the desk. "I might as well read it. Maybe you missed something," he said.

Jazz shook her head. "I didn't miss _anything_, Danny. And didn't you already read it yourself?"

"Well, I wasn't really paying attention when I translated it."

Jazz sighed. "Well, we have to find a cure. If we don't..."

"If we don't then what?" Tucker asked. Jazz sighed and began explaining what she had told Danny and Vlad the previous night to Tucker and Sam while Danny read.

"...What I just don't understand, though, is how they found a cure the first time," Jazz said angrily.

"They didn't find a cure."

All three of them looked up at Danny suddenly, who closed the notebook and lay it down on the desk.

"What?" all three asked.

"Listen. Ever wonder what happened to that ancient Council that was supposed to get rid of this whole Sleeping Sickness? Where are they now? Ghosts just don't up and die, you know. And what I've been wondering about is where Clockwork is through all of this."

"What do you mean? Clockwork came down with the Sleeping Sickness, just like those Observants told us," Jazz said. Danny shook his head in disagreement.

"No. If he _had_ fallen sick, he would be on that lid. He isn't. He also wrote that book. And when you think about it, he would have to have been around then to be able to write it. So Clockwork should have been able to get the cure, and everything would be all fine and normal again."

"What are you getting at, here, Danny?" Sam asked.

"They didn't find a cure. Instead, they just locked the Sleeping Sickness away, and wrote this book to make sure it never happens again. And they're gone now, because to get rid of the Sleeping Sickness, they would have had to come in direct contact with it. And they became sick themselves, so now they're all asleep. Which is why no one can really understand this code; everyone who ever knew it is deep in the Sleeping Death."

"That almost makes sense," a very stunned Tucker stated.

"Yeah, just a few problems. What happened to the other ghosts that had the Sleeping Sickness? The Council? And the sorcerer who was supposed to have created this in the first place?" Jazz asked.

"It's a big Ghost Zone, Jazz. Besides, I don't think they'd just be out there for everyone to see. They'd be in quarantine. And I think this sorcerer is responsible for the second time, too."

"What I want to know is where Clockwork is through all of this," Sam said.

"To be honest, I have no idea," Danny said. "But why would he think that I'd be able to come up with a cure?"

"I dunno, maybe it's because he thinks that you've got something that none of the other ghosts have?" Tucker suggested.

"I don't have anything other ghosts don't have. Well, except for the whole 'half ghost' thing, but that doesn't seem to make much of a difference."

"There must be something..." Jazz said.

"Nothing. I'll probably fall asleep any day now, just like Technus. He was perfectly fine one minute, then the next, he was coughing and falling out of the sky."

"Wait a second, Danny. Did you say that Technus was perfectly fine, then just fell out of the sky?" Jazz inquired suddenly, with the same pondering expression in her eyes.

"Yeah. Well, he said something about remaining 'untouched by the dreaded Sickness', then just started coughing and a few minutes later... Well, it _was_ a nice change from his long-winded speeches..." Danny shrugged.

"So, what you're saying is that he was affected by the Sleeping Sickness almost immediately?" Jazz asked.

"Pretty much," Danny answered. "And this matters how...?"

"And you've been infected for three days?"

"More or less."

"And the Sleeping Sickness affects you more drastically in your ghost mode..."

"What are you getting at, here, Jazz?"

Danny's elder sister sighed. "Well, for some reason, you aren't affected by the Sleeping Sickness as quickly as other ghosts. And I think it's because you're human."

"Jazz, what would that have to do with anything?" Sam asked.

"Because, unless I'm completely wrong, I think that ghosts don't have an immune system."

"What?" the three fourteen-year-olds asked. Jazz nodded slowly.

"It would make sense. The Sleeping Sickness spreads rapidly because ghosts, unlike humans, have no natural defense against diseases. Which is why they couldn't find a cure. Whatever else they may have, ghosts are defenseless agains any sort of virus or bacteria. No blood, no white blood cells. But by the same token, there shouldn't be any sort of ghost disease at all. Ghosts don't have cells, they're really just-what was it mom said?-an 'odd manifestation of ectoplasmic energy and post-human consciousness'."

Danny blinked. "So...what? The Sleeping Sickness shouldn't exist?"

"Exactly."

"But it does..."

"Unfortunately, yes."

"So, how do we get rid of it?" Sam asked.

"We take a leaf out of the Council's book and lock it up again," Danny said determinedly.

"Great. So what did they use to lock the Sleeping Sickness up in in the the first place?" Tucker asked.

Danny sighed and picked up a certain gray lid from the surface of the desk.

"Ever wonder what this is a lid to?"

* * *

Well, the cliffhanger-less chapters were there while they lasted.

Okay, that was incredibly awkward with the whole Vlad thing… I know, but I couldn't figure out how I was supposed to work him back in… Actually, I've just managed to think of a remotely good explanation, so just be on the look out for that next chapter. Rest assured, I will still abide by the Sleeping Sickness rules I've set for myself.

Anyway, this is my big accomplishment of the day. Gee, what an exciting life I have.

So, next update… Don't count on one this weekend, so I'll set a goal for Tuesday and have it here by Wednesday, because I'll probably have a horrible case of writers' block or something. I really need to work on this goal-setting thing-been in Girl Scouts for ten years and that's what they try to teach us; laughable, really, that it's the one thing I haven't learned.

As the stories stand (next update-wise):

**TSS:** Chapter 11 by Wednesday  
**HF:** Chapter 4 by Sunday  
**TPATP:** Chapter 2 by Monday

Um,  
-E.P.


	11. Chapter 10: Finding and Found

Hello, people!

Okay, a mite late on the update, but I have a legitimate reason! I forgot about Advent service on Wednesday nights. But that's life for ya, isn't it?

Um, and I know I didn't reply to reviews. Heh, it just kept slipping my mind. I'll remember this time around. And I'll reply to them as soon as I get them, so there won't be any problems! Right? Right? Right.

Anyway, here we have chapter ten, all sparkly and shiny for you to read.

Disclaimer: Gets the teensiest bit boring after a while, but I don't own DP. Yawnity sigh.

* * *

Chapter 10: Finding and Found

* * *

"What took you so long?" Danny asked of the tired-looking Vlad who had just trudged through the door to the Fenton Works laboratory. 

"Well, I had to wait for my driver to show up. The idiot couldn't think of a better excuse than bad traffic," Vlad protested with annoyance.

"And the reason you couldn't just take a taxi was...?" Tucker prompted.

"I, Vlad Masters, ride in one of those filthy excuses for a car?" Vlad scoffed. "I don't think so."

Danny rolled his eyes at his archenemy. If only Vlad could have collapsed, and right in front of his parents as well...

"So, Danny? What do you think we should do about this whole cure fiasco?" Sam pulled him back to reality. Danny shook his head and blinked.

"You know, I really have no idea."

"Well, I think we still might be able to find a cure," Jazz insisted confidently. "It's just a matter of analyzing this disease and isolating the virus, then we just need to figure out what will make it harmless. Which would be difficult, given that ghosts don't have an immune system, as I said before."

"Difficult how, exactly?" Danny asked.

"Well, it would make things simpler if we could find a way to combine the key elements of a human's immune system with a ghost's energy. But for that we'd need to have a combination of ectoplasm with a human's blood, and we can't exactly get that..." she trailed off.

"Oh, great. Where do I sign up?" Danny asked resignedly with a heavy sigh.

"Danny, we'd need someone who already has that characteristic, and you don't exactly fit that bill," she explained.

"But Danny Phantom can?" Danny said. Jazz bit her lip as she realized what she had overlooked.

"Danny Phantom can," she confirmed.

Vlad looked at either of them. He hadn't been overly fond of any sort of medical procedures, given his past, and decided that he should edge out of the room before they involved him in this.

"Well, then, I've done my part, so I'll just be going..." he said, backing away towards the stairs.

"Oh no," Danny intervened. "You're not going to weasel your way out of this, Plasmius. If I have to do this, you have to do this, too."

"Why, Daniel, may I remind you that you are in no position to be telling me what to do. You cannot force me to do this, you know."

"Actually, the scary part is, I probably could," Danny retorted. "But you're in this no matter what."

Jazz nodded her agreement of her brother.

"That's right, Mr. Masters. Cures for diseases must be tested by a sizeable group, as well as a control group, to check that everyone reacts the same way. You're the only other person who can do that."

Vlad opened his mouth to argue, then shut it as he met Danny's green glare. He'd never known the boy to make empty threats, and although he knew that he could beat Danny easily, he had reason as of late to be suspicious of him. There was something he wasn't telling Vlad, and that something would probably best be not discovered by personal experience. It seems almost a shame that Vlad didn't know how right he was.

"Fine then. I'll do it," he relented.

"Okay then. I think now would be a good time for me to leave..." Tucker said.

"If I couldn't, what makes you think you can?" Vlad asked sharply.

"Trust me, you don't want to go there," Sam said. "Come on, Tucker, let's get you out of here before you go ballistic on us..."

"Right," he said. "Think 'Modeling Agency'."

Danny glanced up at his sister and arch-nemesis staring at him with blank looks that seemed to say '_What was that all about?_' He shook his head.

"Sam's right. You really do _not_ want to go there."

* * *

Clockwork sighed and turned towards the Observants, who had just appeared behind him. They were not, as would have been, in Clockwork's timeful abode. Instead, they were elsewhere in the Ghost Zone; a tall gray door, with an arched top etched with green symbols cast its shadow over them. 

"We delivered your message as you had requested," the first Observant said.

"And the book as well," added the other.

"Good, good..." Clockwork said as his form shifted from that of a young child to a man. "I never thought I'd live to see the day when either of you would take action in anything."

"But you are a ghost!" the first exclaimed.

"It's a figure of speech," Clockwork remarked dryly. "Now then, I expect you'll go back to your oh-so-wonderful oath of watching?"

"Of course," the other Observant replied.

"That was a rhetorical question," he said, shaking his head slightly.

"And are you finally acting as we had instructed?" the first Observant posed again the question he had been asking of the ghost for quite some time.

"I am, and have been," Clockwork stated with an impatient air. "Now if you would leave me in peace...?"

The Observants looked at one another and nodded. They vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.

Clockwork closed his eyes and sighed, as he shifted to an elderly form. Opening them again, he looked up towards the door. Or, more specifically, the symbols glowing faintly upon the archway.

"Perhaps Danny will accomplish what we could not," he said to the characters. "But for now I must find our old foe so we can put a stop to this."

And Clockwork was gone.

* * *

"Jazz, are you finished yet?" Danny asked in a bored voice. He was lying on his back upon one of the tables in his parents' lab. Danny was crumpling pieces of paper up, throwing them into the air, and shooting them with ectoblasts. Vlad, who was leaning against one wall with arms folded across his chest, was watching this procedure with mild interest. 

"Rome wasn't built in a day, you know," she retorted with the cliche phrase, looking up from the microscope she was bent over.

"Yeah, but if you were in charge of building operations, it would have," Danny said, sitting up. Jazz turned back to the microscope, but he could have sworn she was smiling.

Danny picked up a long purple feather and looked it over. He presumed it had belonged to the griffin he had fought so long ago. On a whim, Danny picked up a piece of paper that had yet to be crumpled, and scratched upon it, using the feather like a quill. The slightest bit of concentration, and it wrote with green ink. Danny glanced over towards Vlad, and began drawing a picture of him in bunny slippers. But it was a very rough picture, as Danny coughed every once in a while.

Tucker and Sam had gone home; Tucker on the excuse that his gerbil, who had died seven years previously, needed to be walked, and Sam because her parents still weren't over fond of any of the Fentons-excluding, perhaps, Jazz. Danny's parents had called to say that they were staking out a ghost in an abandoned warehouse somewhere on the far side of town, and wouldn't be back until, as his father had put it, "These Ghost Gauntlets grabbed some ghost!"

And so, they were alone in the house. The laboratory was silent, save for Jazz's occasional muttering, Danny's scratching quill, Vlad's slight whistling, and the occasional cough from either he or Danny.

"Aha!" Jazz said triumphantly, nearly forty-five minutes after Danny had began drawing. Taken by surprise he and Vlad both jumped.

"Well? Did you find something?" Vlad asked anxiously. Jazz nodded, with a smile upon her face.

"I think so," she said, looking at a beaker containing a green substance, not unlike the ectoplasmic residue that often littered the lab.

"And does it work?" he prompted her.

"Well, we'll just have to find out, won't we?" she said. She measured two amounts of the substance into small vials.

"We- we don't have to drink that, do we, Jazz?" Danny asked, with a revolted look upon his face. Jazz smiled cheerfully at him, and Danny groaned.

"It's sort of like a vaccination, but unfortunately, I couldn't find any type of syringe, so yes, you'll have to drink it," Jazz explained. "Hopefully, it'll make you better."

"Yeah, and side effects include headache, nausea, loss of appetite..." Danny said. But he accepted the vial from Jazz, as did Vlad.

"Cheers," Danny said to Vlad, and with a last disgusted look, drank the contents of the vial at the same time as his archenemy.

"Ugh, it tastes like a combination of cardboard, aluminum foil, and lime Jell-O," Vlad said, making a face.

"Really? I thought it was better than most of the other stuff Jazz's cooked up... OW!" Danny said, as Jazz hit him lightly on the head with the book he had translated. "Um, you are sure this won't kill us, right, Jazz?" he asked.

"If I'm right, it shouldn't," she reassured him.

"Never before have I been more grateful that you are always right," Danny muttered. Raising his voice slightly, he added, "And now I'm going to drink something to wash this disgusting taste out of my mouth."

Danny hurried up the stairs, leaving Jazz with an expression somewhere between bashfulness, annoyance, and modest pride.

Vlad looked over at the picture Danny had been drawing; he was curious as to what it was.

"_DANIEL!_" he shouted angrily as he caught sight of his own image.

Wearing a fluffy, pink bunny costume.

With very oversized floppy ears.

And a mustache.

* * *

And… tah-dah! Just couldn't resist that last little bit. You should all know me that well by now. And the only reason it wasn't evil Danny was because I was being realistic; why would someone want to draw a picture of something that reminds them of a painful memory? Wah. Still need to find something to do with those bunny-suited evil Danny pics I have…

Okay, this was kind of short compared to some of my other chapters, and didn't seem to flow as well. To be honest, not much of interest or relevance to the story happened here, excepting the cure being found and the part with Clockwork. But the good news upon this is I've the foundations for the rest of the story laid, and although I am unsure exactly how many more chapters this'll have, I have the ending all planned out. Bank on, (hopefully) at most, three more, plus the epilogue. Although, being me, I'll probably try to do it in two and the epilogue, because I am absolutely dying to start my next story.

And the cure… I was really rushing this. In real life, it would take much longer to find this, but I'm too lazy to go through that whole long process. Use your imagination there, okay? And I've actually had medicine like that before. Chalk, bubble gum, and eraser shavings. Or, aluminum foil, cherry, and maple syrup. Neither is a pleasant combination. Bleh.

Well, on an unrelated note, I might as well say that I'm on the verge of strangling a certain Tammy Thamster… I know where I'm going with that story, I just can't get from point A to point B without banging my head on the keyboard, getting bored of HF, and writing the first two and a half chapters of 'The Halfa That Time Forgot' and the prologue for another story that is absolutely killing me… Geeze, I'm never going to get these ideas finished!

Anyway, I have no idea when the next update will be! Setting goals doesn't exactly work for me, as my little experiment this week proved. Ah, such is the life of a procrastinator. But I've got a lot of motivation to finish this, with the light at the end of the tunnel sighted and the first few paragraphs of the next chapter written. I'll have to rant about 'The Fright Before Christmas' some other time. All I have to say for now is… Darn it! Can't I watch just one episode, _one episode_, of DP without getting fifty gazillion ideas to veto? Heh, I'm going to put every single one of those ideas on my profile. Oh, yes. Yes, I will. And then you will see the enormous amount of self-discipline I am consuming by trying to not write these. Maybe the world really will end in 2012, because that's how long it'll take for me to finish these. Yeah, I can just picture that happening…

Ugh, rambling! Ramble, ramble, ramble… Can't I do anything else? Yeah, I can. I can type my self-appointed initials right below here, and then go and write the next chapter.

-E.P. (Heh, see? Told ya I could…)


	12. Chapter 11: Into the Ghost Zone

Konnichiwa, minasan! (That's 'hello everyone' in Japanese)

Well, this is a lot later than I had originally intended, but trust me, it's well worth the wait. Looking down on this, it took up eleven whole pages without all of my notes; probably my longest chapter yet!

On a side note, I'm coming down with a slight cold now. Heh, kind of ironic, really...

Well, thanks to all of my reviewers who, well, reviewed! I now have over 100... Wow! I love you all so much! (_hugs reviewers_)

And, on the note of reviewers, I must give credit! The part of this chapter concerning Griffin is dedicated to GIR's Cupcake for your suspicions. Suspicions inspire, as all you readers shall see.

Disclaimer: I own Danny Phantom! Mwa-ha-ha! Today is my day! I have succeeded! (_Hartman walks up with a heavy wooden mallet and bonks me on the head_) I mean, no, no, I do not own Danny Phantom. (_Glares at Butch and rubs head_) Happy now?

* * *

Chapter 11: Into the Ghost Zone

* * *

It was nearing six o'clock, and Danny hadn't sneezed or coughed once since he had tried Jazz's remedy. It seemed a little too presumptuous to assume that the medicine had been successful, but that didn't mean he still wasn't hopeful. 

But by six thirty, Jazz proclaimed that, although it was really too early to know anything for sure, she believed that the medicine had worked.

"Although," she added as an afterthought, "in most cases, it can take up to a week to tell for sure. But this isn't a normal case, and if ghosts come down with the Sleeping Sickness faster, it does stand to reason that the cure would work faster."

And all that remained was to test the remedy upon an actual ghost.

"Jazz, I'm not going into the Ghost Zone to find a ghost to test this on," Danny said firmly, continuing (much to Vlad's distaste) upon his second caricature of the elder halfa.

"Well, you're going to have to, because it's the only way we're going to find out if this cure actually works! Unless you can somehow magically procure a ghost out of thin air-"

"Wait a sec, Jazz!" he said suddenly. Danny had been looking at the purple quill as she had been speaking, and had remembered something. He jumped up and began looking through a pile of various ghost-hunting apparatus in the laboratory.

"Danny, what are you-?"

"Found it!" he cried, straightening, with the Fenton Thermos clasped in his hand. He opened it up and pressed the release button, and lo and behold, the sleeping purple griffin appeared right there upon the floor. It was a good thing that the room was so big, because the griffin took up a sizeable amount of space.

"Oh!" Jazz exclaimed. She seized the antidote from the table and sized the griffin up.

"What are you waiting for?" Danny asked.

"Well, normally, the dose of medicine is dependent upon factors such as height and age…" she said.

"I thought you said this wasn't normal at all?" he asked.

"Oh. Well, then, that'll work," she said. Jazz poured the medicine from the beaker into another vial, and walked over to the griffin's lethal beak.

"Help me with this, will you, Danny?" she asked. Danny went over and opened the beak so she could pour the substance down its throat.

A few seconds of apprehensive waiting, and the griffin stirred. Its red eyes snapped open and it gave a loud, roaring yawn.

"We did it!" Jazz exclaimed, hugging Danny. The griffin noticed her, and swiped with its claws.

"Oh no you don't," Danny said in the tone of voice he always reverted to when confronting a ghost. "Going ghost!"

Danny was as good as his word. But, instead of attacking, the griffin did something which surprised the young ghost boy. It sank into something of a bow.

"Um… You're welcome?" Danny said, looking at the griffin with an eyebrow raised in confusion.

It was at that moment that Vlad happened to walk into the room, carrying a glass of water. It took him a few seconds to take in what he was seeing, and when he did, the glass of water fell from his hand.

"D-D-Daniel?" he asked. Danny looked over at his archenemy, and back at the griffin.

"Um, so, hi," Danny said, giving the griffin a small, nervous wave. "So... you're name's Griffin, right?"

He hadn't really expected the creature to understand him, but the giant purple beast nodded its head slowly up and down. Danny blinked, taken aback.

"You- you can understand me?" Another nod.

"Um, Danny...?" Jazz began. He turned to face her. "What exactly are you doing?" she continued.

"I'm... not really sure," Danny said. "Trying to talk to him-"

Griffin gave an indignant, shrieking cry, and shook its head very quickly to the side several times. Jazz shrieked and jumped. Simultaneously, Vlad did likewise, although, much to Danny's dismay, he didn't scream like a girl. Danny blinked and turned his head swiftly to look back at the griffin.

"Um... D-did I say something wrong?" Nod.

"What did I...? _'Trying to talk to him..._' Him! Oh, duh! You're a girl, aren't you?" Danny asked, realizing his mistake. She answered with a nod.

Griffin then lay down and nuzzled Danny. He drew away at first, but then hesitantly stretched out his hand and patted her beak. She closed her eyes and purred lazily.

"So, um, n-now what, Danny?" Jazz asked, still shaken from Griffin's shriek. Danny shrugged.

"I don't know. I'm going to call Tucker and Sam and tell them it worked. And then," he said, with a newly determined voice, "we have to give all the other ghosts the medicine."

"We're going to do that tonight?" Jazz asked, startled. Danny sighed.

"No, we're doing that as soon as Tucker and Sam come over." And Danny flew upstairs.

* * *

"It worked!" Sam said, hugging Danny tightly. 

"Sam...can't...breathe..." he gasped. Sam blushed and quickly let go. Tucker smirked.

"Yeah, it worked," Danny said, rubbing his slightly bruised ribs with a gloved hand. "All thanks to Jazz."

"Aw, well... Really, I didn't... I mean, anyone could have... Aw, thanks, Danny," Jazz said, blushing as much as Sam had. She regained her composure and looked up at her brother.

"So, now we have to give all those ghosts the cure?" Jazz continued. "How do we know which ghosts need it?"

"Why don't you just use that lid-thing?" Tucker suggested, looking up from a picture of Sam hugging Danny that was now on his PDA screen. Sam grabbed the device from his hands and furiously deleted all twenty-four pictures he had taken.

"Why didn't I think of that?" Danny said, hitting himself in the forehead.

"Because you're a C student?" Tucker replied.

"Do you even know what a rhetorical question is, Tucker?" Sam asked, thrusting the incriminating picture-free PDA back into his hands.

"No," he answered. Sam rolled her eyes.

"So, where is that lid, anyway?" she asked.

"I took it back into my room," Danny said. "Here, I'll go get it."

Danny flew up through the ceiling, into his room. The lid was on his desk, luminous symbols glinting. He went over to it, and did a double take.

Three of the names had disappeared from the surface of the lid. More importantly, those names missing were _Griffin, Danny Phantom,_ and _Vlad Plasmius_.

Next to the lid was the book. And next to the lid...

The time medallion glinted, its faded silk ribbon twisted on the desk. Danny remembered what one of the Observants had told him.

'_Once you have found the cure, Clockwork requests that you come to his abode._'

And he decided that he might as well return the book, too. Danny scooped up all three and flew through the floor, back to Tucker, Sam, and Jazz.

"Okay, I've got it," he announced. "And my name's gone."

"What do you mean, 'gone'?" Jazz asked.

"Gone. Disappeared. Vanished," he answered. "So's Vlad's and Griffin's."

"That lid… It must get rid of your name when you're cured," Sam mused.

"Exactly," Danny said. "Now, let's go save the Ghost Zone."

* * *

They passed Vlad in the living room on their way to the lab. 

"Aren't you coming with us, Mr. Masters?" Jazz asked.

"Nope, sorry, that's all you," he said, sitting down in an armchair and opening his book on knitting.

"Gee. Gotta love the support," Danny said dryly. He then confronted Vlad in a threatening tone, pressing the book down so he could look him in the eye.

"Just because this Sleeping Sickness-thing is cleared up, doesn't mean you're welcome in my house. Don't think I'm on your side now." Vlad smiled his crafty, mysterious smile.

"Don't think I'll stop trying to get you on my side. You and your mother."

Danny gave him a last glare and turned away.

* * *

It was unanimously decided that the Specter Speeder would be taken for the heroic sojourn into the Ghost Zone. 

Well, almost unanimously. One being in the room seemed to have a problem with that, and raised her disagreement loudly.

"ROOHOOOAR!" Griffin shrieked, and although it still wasn't as loud as she could have been, the three people standing in the room clapped their hands over their ears and winced.

The fourth person in the room happened to be floating, and was quick to pat the mythological ghost on her downy head, which calmed her down.

"Shh!" Danny reprimanded, still petting. "Don't- just don't do that again, Griffin."

Griffin pulled away and cocked her head at him, letting out a low purring churrip.

"Prrrrrreeep?"

"I don't- Wait, do you- do you want to come with us?" Danny said, realizing what she meant.

"Prrrrruuuurrr!" her head bobbed up and down, and she scratched herself with a lioness's hind leg, doglike, behind one wing.

"Danny, we can't bring a giant purple ghost griffin with us! Besides, I don't think he's house-trained," Tucker said.

Griffin gave another loud shriek at being referred to as a male.

"She's a girl, Tucker," Danny said wearily.

"Oh," Tucker said, backing away from the sharp beak and putting his hands up defensively. "Nice griffin... Good griffin... You don't want to hurt old Tucker now, do you?"

"Anyway," Jazz said, turning away from him, "I think there's enough of our cure to work for everyone. I made more than just that beaker, and I don't think we'll need much more than a drop for each ghost."

"A _drop_? Jazz, I thought you said something about size and weight affecting this! Besides, if we only needed a drop, then why'd I have to drink so much?" Danny complained.

"I did. But it seems that with ghosts, the usual rules don't apply. And consider that payback for that- that thing last Monday."

Danny grinned. "Oh, right, you mean with you and _A_-"

But Jazz had clamped her hand over his mouth.

"Jaff, et offif ee! Ee heed to safe te ghosh shone!" Danny muttered, but his words were indistinct and muffled, given that Jazz's hand was impairing his speech.

"What was that, Danny?" Jazz asked, tentatively removing her hand. Danny thrust it away.

"I said, 'Get _off_ of me! We need to go save the Ghost Zone!'"

"Oh, uh, right," Jazz said. She jumped into the Specter Speeder, pushing Tucker away from the controls. "I'm the one who'll be driving," she said matter-of-factly.

"Okay. So, how 'bout a travel song?" Tucker suggested. Three pairs of hands were slapped over his mouth, and three voices shouted, "_NO!_" with an almost scary urgency.

Tucker crossed his arms and sat sullenly in the seat.

"It was only a suggestion," he lamented mournfully to the cup holder.

* * *

Jazz shivered, looking around at the twisting green mist which comprised the Ghost Zone. It was icy cold in the paranormal realm, which was partially responsible for her shiver, and visibility was somehow both clear and foggy at the same time. Everything glowed with a sickeningly green light, and it was as silent as the grave. 

"It's really creepy in here!" she said nervously. Her voice was barely more than a whisper, but it seemed to echo in the spectral depths.

Danny, mounted upon Griffin's feathery back, nodded in agreement, shivering himself. In his case, the shiver was more from the atmosphere than from the cold. Whether this adaptability to low temperatures came from being half ghost or just from being so used to it, he did not know. The human part of him could not deny that the eerie silence and mysteriously swirling ectoplasmic patterns were unsettling, and even his ghost self was uneasy. He often wondered if the reason ghosts were so keen to escape into the real world was because of the appearance of the Ghost Zone, rather than a desire to lead a dim shadow of the life they once had, or to satisfy an obsession that could range anywhere from boxes to revenge.

But, still, there was a job to be done, as distasteful as it was. Danny had been in the Ghost Zone numerous times before; this wasn't his first, and there was no doubt it would be his last, either. Oddly enough, he found the slightest bit of comfort in the depths of the Ghost Zone; some old familiarity, like a house he had once lived in and had revisited. Danny supposed it had something to do with being half ghost, or maybe with the comforting fact that, as a human, nothing could hurt him in here.

In the Specter Speeder, Sam unfurled a map they had sketched of the Ghost Zone. It covered only a small area in the endless ghost world, but it was something.

"Okay, so we know where Skulker and Technus live, at least. Oh, and you have the Box Ghost marked on here too, Danny."

Green eyes alert and scanning the surrounding area, Danny replied to Sam without looking at her.

"I kind of just threw him in here when he was unconscious, so he's probably just floating around somewhere. I have a good idea where Spectra and Bertrand live, though."

"Well," Sam answered, rolling up the map, "at least we only have-" she counted the names on the paper Danny had translated "-eight ghosts to give this to. Shouldn't be too hard, should it?"

Danny slapped his forehead with a gloved hand. "No. Ugh, I am so stupid! I didn't translate the rest of that lid!"

"What?" Jazz exclaimed. "How many ghosts are on that thing, anyway?"

"Well," Danny said, looking over the long list of names on the lid, "it starts with Ember, then some guys I've never heard of... What kind of name is 'Camera Ghost', anyway? And then... Well, Desiree's thrown in there somewhere, so's Poindexter, the Lunch Lady, Walker, and Wulf... Then a bunch of other ghosts... Hah, look at these names! 'Frederick, Tibbles, Fluffy, Snowball, Percy...' Then it just goes to Skulker and, well, you know the rest." Danny looked up.

"That's a lot of names," Tucker remarked.

"Wow, thanks for pointing out the obvious, Tucker," Sam said sarcastically.

"You're welcome," Tucker chimed. Then he looked down. "Hey, what's that?"

"Hm?" Danny said, looking down to where his friend was pointing. "Hey, isn't that Johnny Thirteen's motorcycle?"

"Looks like it." Jazz's look darkened; she hadn't quite gotten over the incident with the biker ghost. But she steered the Specter Speeder downwards, to where a twisting path of land formed a sort of road through the Ghost Zone. Griffin followed, and landed besides the four objects.

"It is..." Danny murmured, looking at the slumbering figures sprawled upon the ground.

Jazz got out of the Specter Speeder. "Here's the cu-UUUUURRRREE!"

"Jazz!" Danny said, running over to grab her hand. She had stepped out of the Specter Speeder and onto the thin bridge of land, and had fallen through the surface. Danny only barely grasped her, and pulled her up through the ground, Jazz looking quite shaken.

"Are you okay?" he asked, holding her firmly above the ground. Jazz nodded dumbly. "Okay, Ghost Zone rule number one: in the Ghost Zone, we're the ghosts."

"Got it," Jazz said weakly as he put her back into the Specter Speeder.

"Well, Griffin?" Danny asked, turning to his new ally. "Which one should we wake up first?" Griffin put her paw on Kitty. Danny shrugged. "Kitty works."

He picked up an eyedropper that Jazz had thought to bring along and inserted it into the beaker. Danny held it over Kitty and opened her mouth. He let one drop fall.

A few moments, and then Kitty's eyes flickered open.

"Johnny? What happened?" she said weakly. Her eyes came into focus, and saw Danny. "W-wait! You're not Johnny! You're that ghost boy... Danny..." She sat up and looking around, seeing Johnny. "Johnny! Oh, what did you do to him!" she cried.

"I didn't do anything," Danny stated. "Now, you can either sit there with your mouth hanging open, or you can help me."

Kitty closed her mouth, and moved over to kneel by her beloved Johnny. Danny administered the medicine to him, and he, like Kitty, woke up.

"Wh-what happened?" he asked dazedly, sitting up. "K-Kitty?" Kitty smiled and embraced him. Johnny looked up at Danny, who had just finished giving the cure to Shadow.

"Hey! It's you, that punk who tried to steal Kitty from me!" he said angrily. Danny sighed and rolled his eyes.

"I'm also the punk who happened to save your miserable lives. Or, afterlives. Oh, whatever."

Johnny glared and looked for a few minutes as if he were going to attack, then sighed and turned away. "Oh, forget it," he muttered. "I'll waste you some other time." And, standing his bike up, he mounted and called to his girlfriend, "Come on, Kitty. Let's get out of here."

"Thanks, Danny," Kitty said softly, blowing him a kiss. Then she got on behind Johnny and put on her helmet, although, being a ghost, she didn't really need it. And Johnny drove off, Shadow trailing him like a, well, a shadow. But Danny could have sworn that Johnny had thrown him the most fleeting, but thankful, smile.

Danny settled himself back on Griffin's back. "Well," he said, looking down at her face, "Shall we go save some more?" Griffin squawked happily in reply. "Thatta girl, Grif. C'mon!"

* * *

They had found the Box Ghost and Technus floating in the Ghost Zone at random. Technus gave his sizable speech and went off to his lair after he was revived, and the Box Ghost did likewise after declaring, "I am the Box Ghost, master of all things cardboard and square! Beware!" 

Danny, with much help from Griffin, led them along the path he was mostly certain led to Clockwork's abode. And they stopped some while later (although there was the chance that time moved differently in the Ghost Zone) at a particularly blank and silent part of the Ghost Zone.

"There's nothing here," Jazz said blankly, looking up for Danny for reassurance, as if he could see something they could not.

"Darn it! I was sure this was the right way," Danny said to himself. Griffin screeched. "You were sure too, weren't you, girl?" he asked, patting her beak absent-mindedly as he stared out at a space that should have been occupied by a large, spectral clock tower. He pulled the gear-shaped medallion from his pocket, looking at it sadly. Then, struck by a sudden idea, he pulled it over his head, and looked back at the spot.

Clockwork's tower was suddenly visible.

"Bingo," he said, smiling broadly. Danny dismounted and walked up to the enormous door.

"Danny? What are you doing?" Jazz asked.

"It's the medallion," Sam said with realization.

Danny hesitated at the door. Should he knock, or what? Spotting a button implanted upon the ghostly brick wall, Danny pressed it, hoping that it was the doorbell.

The chime resounded throughout the Ghost Zone, causing the halfa and his three companions to jump, and Griffin to shriek in annoyance. Then, the doors creaked open, and Danny hesitated momentarily before stepping inside, doors closing behind him, leaving Tucker, Sam, Jazz, and Griffin staring blankly at the spot where the ghost boy had vanished.

"Um, hello?" Danny asked. He was responded only by a thousand quiet, mingled sounds, echoing his own voice back at him.

As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, Danny saw a staircase ahead. He stepped cautiously up to the first step, then climbed the stairs, spiraling upwards into the darkness.

He reached a door, and, hesitating, knocked softly. This door creaked open, and Danny took that as his admittance to the room.

He'd been in here before. Here was the room where he had first met Clockwork, the room where he had been thrown ten years into the future...

Danny shook his head. He didn't want to remember that.

"Greetings, Danny Phantom," a voice said. Danny gasped at looked at the two Observants, who he could have sworn were not there previously.

"Um... Hi," he said nervously. "I was looking for Clockwork..."

"He had said you would come," the second Observant said.

"I shall tell him of your arrival," the other Observant announced, and vanished.

Danny was left with the other Observant. He felt somewhat nervous in his company; there was definitely something creepy and more ethereal about the Observants than other ghosts.

Danny, however, did not have long to wait. The first of the Observants reappeared, accompanied by Clockwork.

"Hello, Danny," Clockwork said. He turned to the Observants. "You may leave now." They looked to one another, nodded, and vanished.

"Um, hi..." Danny said. He seemed to be saying that a lot lately, and wished he could think of something better to say.

"So," Clockwork continued, "May I assume that you've managed to procure a remedy for the Sleeping Sickness?"

Danny nodded, and supplemented this with, "Yeah, it's outside, with-" he slapped himself on the forehead. "Tucker, Sam, and Jazz! I forgot about them!"

"They're fine," Clockwork reassured him. Seeing the look on Danny's face, he added, "But I will bring them in here, if you wish."

Clockwork gestured with the staff he always carried, and Tucker, Sam, and Jazz appeared there, looking very dazed.

"I- what happened?" Jazz asked. Looking up at Clockwork, she gasped and jumped to her feet. "Who're you?"

"I am Clockwork," he said, extending a hand. Jazz stared for a few seconds, then looked to Danny, who nodded, and she took it.

"Jasmine Fenton. Uh, call me Jazz."

"Pleased to meet you, Jazz," Clockwork said, although Danny had the suspicion that he had previously known who exactly Jazz was.

"Now, I believe that you are the one who managed to construct the cure?" he asked. Jazz looked confused; how could he have known that she was the one who had developed the medicine?

"Well, I- yes, I did."

"So, anyway," Sam said, "We were wondering what exactly this whole thing is about. I mean, we never really found out that much about the Sleeping Sickness, and we want to know what you've been doing this whole time."

"Yeah," Tucker added. "And what about this sorcerer guy who was supposed to have started this whole thing? Danny said he was responsible this time, too, right Danny? Danny? Um, Danny?"

But the halfa didn't reply. His eyes were fixed on a table in the corner of the room, and on that table was a rather dented-looking, green-and-white thermos.

"Danny?" Sam asked. "Something wrong?"

Danny turned suddenly to Clockwork.

"That's not... is it?" It wasn't much of a question, but Clockwork nodded solemnly. Danny swallowed hard.

"Right, well, let's get back to the matter at hand," Clockwork said, shifting to his younger form. "Now, all of your questions will be answered. But, for now, it will suffice to say that it was a long time ago that the original Council is mostly gone. I was indeed one of its members; as were the Observants. And the sorcerer who was responsible is not gone. There was box which had once belonged to the sorcerer, and it was in such that we had sealed the Sleeping Sickness- for all eternity, we had hoped. As a precaution, however, the lid of this box was crafted to list the names of the victims. Now, if we could find that-"

"You mean this?" Danny said, holding out the gray lid to the Master of Time.

"Yes," Clockwork said, with some surprise. "What is the first name on the list?"

"Ember McLean," Danny read.

"Then, I believe that, if we find Ember, we will find the sorcerer."

"But, sir, what about the other victims?" Jazz asked.

"If you and your friends would be able to find them and administer the cure, there will be no problem. However, the sorcerer is priority. We must eliminate him. And, to do that, I must revive the rest of the Council."

"So what do we do?" Tucker asked. Danny intercepted Clockwork before he could speak.

"You guys give the cure to everyone else you can find. Clockwork's gonna find the rest of the Council and give them the cure. And me and Griffin are going to see if we can find this sorcerer," he said pointedly.

Clockwork nodded his approval of the plan. "Excellent."

"So, what are we waiting for?" Jazz asked.

"Nothing," Danny said. He strode purposefully out of the door, followed by Jazz, Sam, and Tucker. But Clockwork paused before he accompanied them. He looked deeply into the Window of Time for a few moments, his expression indistinct, then sighed and followed them out of the door.

* * *

And there you have it. Another kind of blah-ish, not very eventful chapter, but it was necessary for the set up of our next chapter. The final chapter and climax of this story. Wow, already there's only that and the epilogue left? Seems like it wasn't that long ago that I typed the prologue… Um, but I can reminisce later.

Heh, so next chapter… Well, I won't say anything, but it certainly will come as a surprise to some of you. Maybe someone will be observant and make a lucky inference, or maybe not. Heh, but even if you do, I won't give it away. We'll just have to wait and see, hm? And you'll see Griffin's other purpose that I managed to come up with, too.

See ya then!

-E.P.


	13. Chapter 12: The Library

Hello, to my readers! Although I at first had thought that I would have been unable to update during my stay in California, I found out that my grandparents had a new computer the day before we left. So, rather than keep my rough first draft and post that, I saved all this so I'd be able to access it while I'm in Torrance... And it worked! Ha-ha!

So, then, this chapter… Originally I had planned for this to be in one chapter, but when I finished it, it took up sixteen pages. SIXTEEN! Which is way too long for me. So, instead, I divided it into two halves, and you'll have two back-to-back updates. Heh, and a little cliffhanger at the bottom, 'cause I couldn't resist. But you get to read the next chapter right after, so it's all good.

So, nonetheless, her 'tis! The next-to next-to-last installment in 'The Sleeping Sickness'.

Disclaimer: Blah, blah, blah... In case you haven't figured it out by now, I don't own the show!

* * *

Chapter 12: The Library

* * *

Sam had thoughtfully remembered to bring the Fenton Phones- the communicators which filtered out ghost noise- along for the trip. Unfortunately, there were only three pairs. It had been decided that Tucker would go without the communicators, this largely supported by Danny and Sam. When Jazz asked the two why, she was reassured with the vague and evasive answer of "You don't want to know." And Jazz left it at that, although Tucker only reluctantly agreed.

Danny had translated the lengthy remainder of the ghostly lettering upon the lid. His sister and friends would keep his translation, provided that they could make out his rough handwriting, and Danny would be able to track their process with the help of the small gray lid.

Once such preparations were complete and a few parting words and luck-wishing were exchanged, they parted company.

Danny found himself being led into an unfamiliar section of the Ghost Zone. Now, more than ever, was the creepy, desolate atmosphere pressing down on the young halfa. Griffin pawed nervously, and he absently patted her beak, looking around at the hanging doors, floating islands, and thickly swirling mist. The Ghost Zone seemed to have a life of its own, yet at the same time, be entirely lifeless.

Danny glanced down at Griffin. He'd met ghosts before that were civil towards him, even friendly. There was the Dairy King, for example, who had freed Danny from a ghost containment cube, and had instilled upon him the words, "Not all ghosts are evil, doncha know. Some of us just want to be left alone," before flying off and muttering something about gouda. And there was also a ghost dog, who had, despite all the trouble he caused, earned the unspoken title of 'Halfa's best friend'. And then there was Wulf, who had mutually helped Danny rid Amity Park of Walker during the town's first major ghost invasion. But there was something about Griffin that still bothered him.

For one thing, he had fought her. True, he had sparred with both Wulf and the ghost dog before forming a truce, but she had been purposefully attacking two children, whereas the ghost dog was only searching for his squeakie and Wulf was being forced to by Walker's orders. He'd fought with her twice, and oddly enough, had both times encountered her over the park. And then there was her odd behavior: how she had bowed to him in the Fenton Works lab.

Dismissing his worries concerning Griffin, Danny's thoughts turned to Clockwork. Danny didn't know much about the Master of Time. He had at first tried to kill Danny, then had later saved his family and friends, and given him a second chance. It was, to say the least, baffling, but Danny was sure Clockwork had his reasons. And there was the Sleeping Sickness. Danny hadn't really gotten a satisfactory answer from the ghost. In fact, he hadn't really gotten much of an answer at all. All he knew was that he needed to find this sorcerer that was responsible for unleashing the Sleeping Sickness, and stop him.

Danny yawned. It seemed such a long time since he had woken up that morning and decoded the strange ghostly language. It had been even longer since he had last eaten. He was also more than slightly tired, and wondered what time it was. He was sure that time ran differently in the Ghost Zone than it did in the human world, and thought that even if he managed to find a clock it would be anything but helpful. If there was only some way he could find out what time it was...

Danny blinked. He was flying next to the ghost Master of Time, and hadn't thought to ask! Still, there was a reason he was a C student.

"What time is it?" he croaked, his voice ringing uncomfortably in the thick silence.

Clockwork didn't glance in Danny's direction, nor did he glance at any of his various watches which adorned his wrists. "In your world? Just slightly after nine o'clock."

"Mmm..." Danny replied thoughtfully, looking ahead. "So, uh... Where're we going?"

"To an old place," Clockwork replied vaguely. "To visit a few of my old associates."

"Ah," Danny said, although the statement scarcely qualified as clarifying. "So, uh, about this sorcerer-guy-"

"I know no more than you do," the ghost answered, although somehow Danny didn't think that was entirely true.

The halfa sighed, knowing he would get little more for an answer. "Right."

The silence continued, although for how long, Danny could not say. There was a question he was itching to ask Clockwork, and had been since the- the C.A.T. incident. He'd just never really gotten the chance to ask it, and now that he had that chance, he did not know how to put it.

But the ghost looked over at Danny. "You may ask," he said simply, breaking Danny's train of thought. The halfa jumped; somehow Clockwork had known what he had been thinking.

"Well, I- I've been wondering..." he stammered, struggling for words.

"Go on," Clockwork encouraged.

"Well, I've been meaning to ask... Now that I- now that my future's..._fixed_, well, what happens now? To me, I mean, and to my family... What's it really going to be like ten years from now?"

Clockwork smiled, closed his eyes, and shook his head once to each side. "Ah, many have asked that question. The future is a mysterious thing, and far too many try to perceive it. It is, as I have said before, a parade, with many twists and turns, the route ever changing. No mortal may know such things, for it is a great burden, and neither can any ghost."

"So, you can't tell me?" Danny said with a hint of disappointment in his voice.

"Specifically? No. What if I had told you that your future was destined to be even worse, and you to blame? What would you do?"

Danny winced. "Probably go and end it all, or isolate myself, or- or something," he admitted.

"Exactly. And the exact steps you take to prevent that are the steps that lead down the road to that future."

"So- so, d-does that happen?"

"No. It may please you to know that ten years from now, your future will be much the opposite of what it once may have been."

"Can we expand on this a little?" Danny prompted. "I mean, am I married, do I have kids, did I go to college... that sort of thing."

"You will be married," Clockwork said with an amused look on his face. "To whom, I will not tell. As for kids... No, not ten years from now, but yes, eventually. And college? Perhaps," he mused.

Danny blinked. This wasn't much clearer, but it was something to look forward to. "Anything else you can tell me?" he inquired.

Clockwork smiled and shook his head. "You'll just have to find out for yourself. But, come, we have more important things to do. Let us concentrate on the present. We have arrived."

Danny looked up. He hadn't given a thought to the surroundings recently, so it came as a bit of a surprise. Ahead of him loomed a large arched door, standing taller than most he had seen but not terribly wide. It was a soft, blurred gray in color which eerily reminded him of a certain lid, and the arch bore several words comprised of a luminous green script.

"Here are they who lie eternally asleep for their brave efforts. May they truly rest in peace," Danny read aloud after he had dismounted Griffin, looking questionably at Clockwork as he reached the final words.

"A fitting message, if not untrue," Clockwork commented. "I had advised against that tribute, but some do not listen." He sighed. "Never mind, we have work to you. You have been wondering what had happened to the Council and the original victims of the Sleeping Sickness. This," Clockwork gestured widely, "is where they rest. There was once a key, which of late has vanished from this realm."

"Vlad," Danny muttered, remembering the Pariah Dark incident.

"Indeed," Clockwork nodded.

"So, how do we get in?" Danny asked.

"You," Clockwork said simply.

"Me?" Danny asked incredulously, gazing at the door. "But how do I-" Danny stopped, smiling with realization, and advanced towards the door. He allowed himself to slip back into his human form, and then hesitantly placed a hand on the door. It slipped through, and Danny followed.

It was dark, a murky, dusty darkness, with the still air and sense of ancientness that lingered about tombs. Danny could feel his feet slipping through the insubstantial floor, and quickly returned to his ghostly form, the blue-white rings leaving sharp after-images burned into his eyes, eyes which, although they were much keener in his ghost form, saw little better through the heavy darkness. Danny couldn't see his hand in front of his face, much less the door which he needed to unlock.

Danny frowned, then brightened as a thought came to him. He lit up his hand with ectoplasmic energy, but held it rather than firing a destructive blast.

The room lit up with the spectral light source. From what Danny could make out, the room was wide and circular, a majestic carpet of crimson thread leading off until it was lost to view. Tables were strewn out beside the carpet, each bearing a supply of candles, and the towering walls were lined with bookshelves. Everything bore a slightly greenish aura from Danny's light, casting longer and darker shadows than they should have. Looking up, the ceiling was lost to view; engulfed in the darkness which may have gone on forever. Danny was in an enormous library.

Remembering why he was there, Danny turned to survey the door. He could see no visible sign of any sort of lock, so Danny did the first thing he could think of: he pushed.

The doors creaked outwards on hinges that hadn't been used for ages, revealing the forms of Clockwork and Griffin, who advanced into the library. Clockwork looked from side to side, made a sweeping gesture with his staff, and the candles all about the room flared into life, revealing the library in its full glory.

"So," Danny said, he voice echoing in the empty and abandoned depths. He didn't finish his sentence.

"This," Clockwork explained, "is the great library of the Ghost Zone. In it is documented every story, every legend, every myth, every history of this realm. Impressive, isn't it?"

Danny nodded. "Who did all this?"

"Many have," Clockwork said. "I have, of course, and also many of the Ancient Council. It has lain abandoned for centuries. I've kept many of the more recent records with me, but my small collection pales in comparison. It is my hope that we can continue." He paused for a moment, then smiled at Danny. "An entire wing could be filled with your deeds, and perhaps another of what is to come."

"Where is everyone?" Danny asked.

"The library is enormous. I believe that I can take this from here."

"Wait... what about me?" Danny asked.

"I believe it would be best for you to revive others who suffer from the Sleeping Sickness. And then, you must find the location of the sorcerer. My business is here."

Danny nodded. He'd have liked to see more of the library, but Clockwork was right. He needed to concentrate on the present. Danny took Griffin to the door, and mounted her.

"Farewell, Danny. We'll meet again soon enough," Clockwork said with a knowing smile. Danny nodded, and turned to go.

Then he turned back, remembering something. "Wait!" he cried.

"Yes?"

Danny leapt down from Griffin, a gray book held in his hands. He handed the book to Clockwork.

"Here. I think this should go here," he said. Clockwork smiled and tucked the book underneath his arm. Danny returned to Griffin, and looked at the lid. Several names had disappeared from its surface; Sam, Tucker, and Jazz were obviously doing their work. Danny watched as Wulf's name disappeared, then asked Griffin to go off in the direction of Skulker's lair, which he was sure existed somewhere nearby.

* * *

Sam leapt into the Specter Speeder, waving cheerfully at Wulf, who garbled his thanks in Esperanto. Tucker replied happily in the same language.

"What did you say to him?" Jazz asked and she took up the controls.

"I don't know," Tucker admitted as they drove off. Sam rolled her eyes.

Wulf waved a final farewell, then frowned, wondering what on earth the techno-geek had meant by turkeys and water polo.

"Okay," Sam said, looking at the map of the Ghost Zone. "So, I think that if we go this way-" she pointed "-we'll be able to get Spectra and her whiney assistant next. And then if we make a left at the lake of bubbling green goo, we'll be able to find Desiree. Sound like a plan?"

"Works for me," Jazz said, turning in the direction Sam had pointed.

Static played on Sam's Fenton Phones. "_Sam?_" the fuzzy voice questioned.

"Danny?" she asked. "Is that you?"

"_No_," the voice answered. Sam envisioned her friend rolling his eyes. "_It's the Muffin Man. Who do you think?_"

"Oh, right," she answered. "So, what's up? Found the sorcerer guy yet?"

"_Unfortunately, no_," Danny answered. "_I left Clockwork at this ghost library so he can wake up all his old Ancient Council buddies. How're you doing?_"

"Don't you know from that lid?"

"_Yeah, Sam_," came the sarcastic reply. "_The lid can tell me whether or not you've been attacked by any ghosts. It also tells me the weather forecast and has a built-in GPS._"

"Okay, okay! Nothing's really happened so far. We've gotten pretty much everyone we come across who's asleep. It's kind of obvious," Sam glanced down at the paper, with some crossed out names. "We've gotten about a third done already. Most ghosts don't give us much trouble."

Jazz nodded her agreement. "They generally just ignore us and go away, or tell us to beat it. I think they're just relived to be awake."

"_That's good. I've gotten Skulker, and about thirty of the ghosts before him. Starting with the one labled Flopsie._"

"Sounds like you've been busy," Sam commented.

"_Not really. They're all of Skulker's pets. And they were all in a trashcan labeled 'Expired Prey_'."

"That's sick and disgusting! Imagine how all those poor ghosts feel, being locked up in cages and thrown in a trashcan when they-"

But Tucker had placed his hand over her mouth to prevent her from ranting.

"Let it go, Sam. They're ghosts, anyway, and it's not like ghosts have feelings or anything."

"_Hey_!" Danny said angrily. "I'm _a ghost, too, you know!_"

"Yeah, and we all know how you feel about Sammykins." Tucker grinned at Sam, then whitened at her look.

"You do realize that we're floating in an abyssal dimension full of malevolent ghosts where no one would find you if we just left you on one of these islands, don't you?" Sam asked dangerously, her cheeks red.

"_So, where are you now?_" Danny asked, who, from the sound of it, was trying to control his laughter.

"We're close to Spectra," Jazz said, as Sam was too busy trying to hold Tucker's beret as far away from the techno-geek as possible.

"_I'm close to Spectra's lair, too_," Danny said. "_Here, why don't I take Tucker. Before Sam kills him._"

* * *

Danny met up with Jazz, Sam, and Tucker, who was miraculously still breathing. They administered the cure to Bertrand and Spectra, and then split up again, this time Tucker riding upon Griffin with Danny. They went to Walker's prison, and Sam and Jazz departed to look for Desiree.

Danny had given his Fenton Phones to Tucker, so that he could communicate with Sam and Jazz.

And finally, only a handful of ghosts remained. Danny, Tucker, and Griffin went to find Ember, and Jazz and Sam looked for Youngblood and his pirate crew.

Ember's lair was a giant recording studio. Danny, Tucker, and Griffin entered.

The place was quite large. Various recording and musical paraphernalia lay about, including drum sets, keyboards, and guitars, as well as speakers, microphones, and amplifiers, all emblazoned with Ember's insignia of a lowercase black E set on a bright blue flame. The place looked entirely normal, if not for the ghosts which lay scattered sleeping about, and the puzzling addition of a broken clipboard lying near Ember.

Danny stared around for a few moments.

"H-hello?" a timid voice asked from behind him. Griffin growled at the sound of his voice. Danny jumped and turned around, to see Ember's producer standing there, blinking his gray eyes in his gray suit beneath his gray hair. He wore thick black glasses, and clutched a black pen in his hands, as if it gave him reassurance to hold it.

"Um, hi," Danny answered. "What are you doing here?"

"Ms. McLean hired me," he answered. Danny barely suppressed a shiver; the ghost's voice was icy. Still, what else could one expect from a ghost?

"Oh," Danny said, thinking that anyone Ember hired was no good.

"It's really quite a shock. I'm not entirely sure what happened to them, and I was there and saw it all," he continued, looking around at the ghosts lying on the floor with his gray eyes.

"Can you tell me what happened before they...fell asleep?" Danny asked.

"Yes. We were in the middle of her music video. She just started coughing."

Danny nodded uneasily, and watched Tucker, who knelt to give the cure to a ghost whose red cap had fallen off. There was something funny about this ghost, something he couldn't put his finger on.

"He was filming it," the ghost nodded in the direction of the specter Tucker was reviving. "We argued, and Ember got mad at us."

The ghost opened his green eyes and blinked, sitting up, then picked up his cap and put it on his head.

"Hello, Mr. Mortis," he said groggily, rubbing his eyes. "What 'appened?"

"You came down with the Sleeping Sickness," Mr. Mortis answered.

_But... Didn't he just say he didn't know what happened?_ Danny asked himself incredulously. The uneasy feeling continued to grow. As Tucker moved on to awaken several other ghosts, Danny, Mr. Mortis, and the camera ghost stared down with interest.

"It was such a sad thing, really," Mr. Mortis continued as Tucker moved on to the last ghost who remained asleep, Ember herself. The camera ghost nodded his agreement.

"Hey!" Tucker said angrily to Danny, "What, leave me to do all the work? I demand a raise for this!"

"Sure thing, Tucker. We'll double your pay. And even I'm good enough at math to know that nothing times two is still nothing."

Tucker groaned as he dripped the last of the medicine into Ember's mouth.

"Ugh, what happened?" she asked as she sat up. "Hey! It's you, that dipstick ghost boy who's always ruining my plans!" she said to Danny. "What, did you do this?"

"Ms. McLean! You're awake!" Mr. Mortis exclaimed. "No, I was just telling this young man what happened. I've been so worried ever since you fell asleep, I haven't left the studio."

Griffin growled again. Danny glanced at her, then back to Mr. Mortis. Something was very wrong about him, something in his story that just didn't ring true...

And then something clunked into place in Danny's head. With a sudden movement, he whirled on the ghost and grabbed him by the throat, holding him up against the wall.

* * *

"Okay, so that's the last of them," Sam said over the parting "BEWARE!" of the Box Ghost. She turned to Jazz. "So, shall we go meet up with the guys?"

Jazz nodded and got into the Specter Speeder.

"Hey, Tucker?" she asked as she activated the Fenton Phones. The sound of something breaking and the thump of someone being thrown into a wall reached her ears. "Tucker! What's going on?"

"_Danny's-unff!-fighting this gho- Hey! That's got three payments on it! ...Anyway, Jazz, Sam, you'd better get over here! Danny's fighting this sorcerer-guy, M-_unh!"

"Tucker? Tucker!" Jazz exclaimed, but no reply came but for an unintelligible _m-mm-MMPHFF!_ She looked up at Sam, who had heard the whole thing.

"Something's wrong," she said.

* * *

See? I just couldn't resist the cliffhanger! But the next chapter should be up by now, so you aren't really kept in suspense. Unless, of course, you _want_ to be kept in suspense. Then, by all means, wait a day or week or something before you read the next-to-last chapter. Or the penultimate chapter. Yeah, 'penultimate' is my vocabulary word of the week. Well, not really, but it's an awesome word! Spelled with the same first three letters as 'penguin', you know…

My ceaseless rambling shall cease now, so you can read the next chapter, which should be up by now.

-E.P.


	14. Chapter 13: The Sorcerer

Well, here's the second back in my back-to-back update! Nothing to say here, except my backwards disclaimer.

Remialcsid: .sdrawkcab sremialcsid ym etirw od I fi neve ,motnahP ynnaD nwo t'nod I

* * *

Chapter 13: The Sorcerer

* * *

"Hey! Get away from my producer and tell me what happened!" Ember growled.

Danny ignored her and turned to Mr. Mortis.

"What is the meaning of this?" he exclaimed.

"What, don't you know?" Danny asked, his eyes narrowed. "It was you, wasn't it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Mr. Mortis said, crossing his arms.

"Yes, you do. You know as well as I do that there's no way you could have seen what had happened and been awake to tell about it. The Sleeping Sickness spreads too fast for that. And you know it."

"Why would I?" he snarled.

"Because," Danny said, his green eyes widening with realization, his voice dropping to a softer, more startled tone when he next spoke. "You're the one who started it."

Mr. Mortis glared for a few seconds, then smiled. "Perceptive boy, aren't you?" he rhetorically asked, his voice icier than ever. He blasted Danny so that he was thrown across the room, and the ghosts, and Tucker, backed out of the way. Mr. Mortis made a sweeping gesture with his pen and gray bands appeared around the ghosts and Tucker, restraining them.

"You've found the cure, something that those idiots you've obviously been associating with never managed to do," he continued.

"What?" Danny said as he got to his feet.

"Well, of course! You're wearing the medallion of that meddling Clockwork. I suppose he's still around, isn't he?" Mr. Mortis spat.

Danny brushed himself off, not taking his eyes off of his foe.

"So, boy?" Mr. Mortis prompted. "Aren't you going to tell me your name?"

Danny drew himself up to his full height, which wasn't terribly much, given the fact that he was fourteen. But, still, something about his ghost powers gave him an impressive and intimidating aura. "What, aren't you going to tell me yours?"

The ghost glared from behind his glasses. "Very well then. I am Mortimer Mortis, most powerful sorcerer in the Ghost Zone!"

Tucker laughed. "What kind of name is that?" The sorcerer glared at him, but said nothing.

He turned to Danny. "Well?"

"Danny Phantom," Danny answered, trying to keep from laughing. "But, really, what kind of name is Mortimer Mortis?"

"You mock me?" the sorcerer asked dangerously.

"No! Here, how 'bout I just call you Morty," Danny suggested. The sorcerer fired a gray ectoblast from the tip of his black pen. Danny ducked this, and the one that followed it, before leaping behind a drum set for a shield.

"Geeze, he's pretty dangerous for someone who wears glasses," Danny muttered to himself.

He had no more time to comment on the ghost's eyewear, for at that moment the drum set was entirely vaporized. Danny dodged three consecutive blasts, before firing one of his own, one that the sorcerer, unfortunately, dodged quite easily.

The next ectoblast hit Danny squarely in the chest, knocking him backwards into a keyboard. Danny instinctively went intangible, but it did no good: Danny still collided with the ghostly instrument.

Leaping up into the air, the ghost boy shot straight into the sorcerer, knocking him into a wall for the same treatment Danny had received via keyboard. Danny managed to land a few punches, before he was blasted away from the sorcerer landing accidentally on the rather tied-up Ember.

"Get _off_ of me, dipstick!" she growled, somehow managing to throw Danny straight into Tucker, who had been muttering into his Fenton Phones, which he had somehow managed to activate even while tightly bound.

Danny scrambled up from the wreckage of Tucker's PDA, Tucker exclaiming unhappily, "Hey! That's got three payments on it!"

"Sorry, Tuck," Danny muttered. "Try to talk to Sam and Jazz, okay?" The techno-geek acknowedged him with a single nod, and continued doing just that.

"...Anyway, Jazz, Sam, you'd better get over here! Danny's fighting this sorcerer-guy, M-_unh!_"

Mr. Mortis had shot a blast at Tucker to quiet him, then quickly gagged him with gray ectoplasmic energy. Tucker made angry "Mm-mm-MMPHFF!" sounds, but could say nothing more intelligible than that.

"Hey! Leave him alone!" Danny shouted angrily, firing a double-handed ectoblast to enhance his words. The sorcerer sneered.

"Why would a ghost even care about a human?"

Danny shouted back angrily, "He's my best friend! Besides I'm-" But Danny stopped. Obviously, this sorcerer didn't know that he was half ghost. Maybe he could use that against him...

"Ah," Mortimer said, "I see. You're that ghost child that little miss stuck-up, full-of-herself Ember always goes on about, wanting revenge. The so-called 'halfa'."

Danny winced_. Okay, so he already knows. Come on, Phantom, think of something here..._

Danny's thinking time was cut short, however, as another gray beam collided with him, knocking him off of his feet and into a wall. Danny sprung to his feet, trying to look wildly around for something that might help him, while still keeping his eyes on the spectral sorcerer.

Side-stepping another blast, Danny's booted feet came in contact with something hard and relatively flat. Glancing down, he saw the pink-and-blue surface of Ember's guitar.

_Bingo,_ the ghost boy thought to himself, picking it up.

"Hey, Morty?" he called, "This one goes out to you!"

Danny strummed the guitar with a long sweep, producing a sound that was none too pleasant but blasted the sorcerer back several feet.

Emboldened by the success of his wild attempt, Danny shouted back, "So, you wanna rock?"

"Well, if you want to play _that_ way," Mortimer replied coolly, "Then let's play!"

Half a dozen guitars rose up into the air, surrounded by an odd gray glow, and flew towards Danny. With little time to react, the halfa wielded Ember's guitar to whack four away, shouting as he did so.

"Hey! I'm not taking requests!"

The fifth guitar, however, snapped the guitar clean in two. Ignoring Ember's disheartened wail, Danny threw the pieces behind him, and dispatched the final guitar with an ectoblast.

He did not, however, notice the two halves of the pink-and-blue guitar shooting towards him...

One piece missed entirely, but the handle, with the four strings whipping along behind it like a comet's tail, whacked Danny hard in the left shoulder, each string slapping him across the face, three cutting him deeply.

Danny raised a gloved hand to his cheek, coming away lined with green blood. Danny winced, and returned his gaze to Mr. Mortis.

"You know, there's a 'No strings attached' joke in there somewhere, but I'm not in the mood right now."

Danny fired five green blasts in quick succession, two colliding with his foe. To top it off, he gathered a triple-sized ball of energy over his head and threw it at the sorcerer, smiling as that also hit its mark.

The smile slid from his face, though, as several of the extension cords sprang to life, restraining his arms and legs. Danny tugged at them, but they only got tighter.

"So, you thought you could win," the sorcerer said, clasping his hands behind his back to look towards Danny, who was still struggling with the restraints. His tone was cool and casual, as if he were discussing the weather. "I'm actually surprised you lasted this long, to tell you the truth." The sorcerer picked up one of the cords, one which happened to be attached to Danny's right wrist, observing it thoughtfully.

"So," he added suddenly, rounding at Danny with his pen held out like a sword, "any last words, boy?"

Danny looked thoughtful for a moment, then seized the cord around his right wrist with his hand.

"Just three," he said. "Go ghost stinger!"

Danny sent as much energy as he could muster back along the cord, severely shocking the sorcerer. The cords which had restrained his other limbs uncoiled, allowing Danny to fall to the ground. Mortimer also fell to the ground, apparently in pain.

It was at that moment that the Specter Speeder burst through the wall of the studio, right behind Danny.

"Danny!" Sam called, jumping out and running towards her friend.

"Sam," Danny acknowledged. "Did you, by any chance, happen to bring the Fenton Thermos?"

Sam smiled and withdrew the containment device from behind her back.

A gray blast hit her moments later.

"Sam!" Danny shouted, running to her.

"I'm fine," she muttered. "But where's the thermos?"

And indeed, the Fenton Thermos had fallen from her grasp, and now lay underneath the rubble caused from the battle.

"Quick, help me find it!" Danny said urgently to Sam, and his sister, who had just gotten out of the Specter Speeder. The three began digging through the debris.

Another gray blast suddenly hit Danny.

"Oof!" he cried, as he was thrown backwards into an amplifier.

"I'm afraid you just can't win," Mortimer said evenly.

Danny glared. "That's what you think!" he shouted, but he could see the sorcerer's point. Danny was tired, and he'd run out of ideas, and powers. Well, there was always... but it would never work. Danny was simply too tired. If, perhaps, he had something that could amplify it...

And then, glancing at the amplifier, it hit him. Buying time, Danny threw an ectoblast to distract the sorcerer, then turned to Jazz and Sam.

"Forget the Fenton Thermos," he muttered, "help me get these plugged in to those speakers and a microphone." Danny shoved a fistful of cords into their hands. They stared questioningly for a few moments, but Danny motioned furiously for them to obey his orders. Taking a cord himself, he turned back to the sorcerer, dodging two blasts as he dove towards one of the speakers.

It was a matter of moments to get all of the equipment wired up, but it was difficult due to Mr. Mortis's constant hindrance.

"Microphone, microphone..." Danny muttered, looking furiously around for the instrument he sought. "Where's a... aha!"

The ghost boy seized the device, jamming the cord into the bottom. He turned, and looked fearlessly into the eyes of the sorcerer.

"Oh, now what?" he scoffed, clearly unaware of Danny's plan. "Are you going to sing for me?"

Not wanting to waste breath on returning with a witty remark, Danny simply nodded once and inhaled...

...Then shrieked into the microphone, as loud as he could.

The force of the Ghostly Wail would normally have shattered anything it touched, but the equipment in Ember's recording studio had been specially designed to resist sound-based attacks of a ghostly origin. The equipment still didn't hold out more than a few minutes, but it was enough.

Every window in the building shattered simultaneously. The bonds which had restrained the ghosts evaporated, leaving them free to clamp their hands over their ears. Mr. Mortis slapped his own hands to his ears, dropping his pen as he did so.

Danny wailed for all he was worth, until the ghost equipment finally gave out. He dropped the microphone and fell backwards, barely able to keep conscious and in his ghost mode, but somehow managing it all the same.

'Shambles' couldn't even begin to describe what the room looked like; it was more like ground zero after a bomb blast. And even that was somewhat of an understatement.

Ember removed her hands from her ears, looking much whiter than she normally did (if that was at all possible), and looked at Danny, her mouth agape.

"That's some singing voice you've got there, kid," she gasped. Danny could barely find the energy to smile.

Mortimer got to his feet, picking up his pen and dusting himself off. "Well, that was an interesting display of vocal talent," he said, much more calmly than he looked, with his glasses shattered, "but I think I'll be getting on now. And don't bother trying to stop me; you're too weak to even walk."

Danny strugged to his feet, only to fall back. _He's right..._ he said angrily to himself. _I can't even walk._

"Ah, and... Who have we here?" Danny looked up at the sorcerer; he was referring to, of all ghosts, _Griffin_.

"Ah, Griffin," the sorcerer said. "How nice to see you. Now, be a good little girl and finish the ghost boy off."

His heart sinking in his chest, if indeed it beat at all in his ghost mode, Danny looked through eyes that were somehow still green at Griffin, who was advancing steadily towards Danny.

It all made sense... Griffin had been working for the sorcerer all along...

And then, she stopped, and whirled on the sorcerer with a roar to match Danny's Ghostly Wail.

Griffin rounded on Mr. Mortis with a blue blast of flame. The sorcerer, surprise etched on his face, leapt back, unknowingly towards Danny.

"What! Griffin, no! Wait! I'm you're master, I-" Mortimer shrieked. But that was the last thing he ever said. Danny had found the Fenton Thermos, just beside him and buried under the tattered remnants of a snare drum, and took this opportunity to suck Mortimer Mortis into the depths of the ghost containment device with the word Fenton before it. Danny caught the black pen neatly as it fell from the sorcerer's grasp, and snapped the lid back onto the thermos.

Tucker and Sam walked over to him, helping their friend to his feet.

"Tucker? Sam?" Danny asked with weak surprise. "You're alright? But... I thought... The Ghostly Wail..."

Sam smiled and pulled the Fenton Phones from her ears, showing them to Danny as Tucker supported him.

"The Fenton Phones," she said with a smile. "They filter out ghost noise, remember?"

Danny smiled. "I remember. They make great techno-Goth earrings, too." Sam blushed at that.

"Very impressive," a voice said from behind them. They turned, to see a group of robed ghosts they'd never seen before, accompanied by Clockwork.

"I- Clockwork? But...where'd these guys all come from?" Danny asked.

The Master of Time smiled. "The Library," he replied simply. Danny nodded his understanding.

"So," continued the unfamiliar ghost who had first spoken. "A child has managed to defeat one of our greatest foes, and accomplished what we could not."

Danny blinked in surprise. It sounded like a compliment!

"I... Well, I... I had some help..." he said.

"As you should!" the ghost continued. "Clockwork has told us what you have done. On behalf of the entire Ghost Zone, we thank you." The group of ghosts bowed deeply.

A second ghost spoke up, his voice much deeper than the first. "If there is anything we could ever do to repay you, all you need to do is ask."

Danny blinked. Here was a bunch of ancient, all-powerful ghosts indebted to _him_? Offering him whatever he wanted?

"Well?" the ghost asked expectantly. Danny sighed, and looked down at the Fenton Thermos in his hands. He looked up, and moved over to Clockwork.

"Here," he said. "I think you have a safe place for these."

Griffin walked up and nudged Danny with her beak. Danny patted her gratefully.

"Thanks, Griffin," he said. "Couldn't have done it without you." Danny sighed and looked back up at the ghosts.

"You know, I don't think there's anything you could give me that I can't get for myself." Danny glanced back over at his friends and sister. "Especially that I don't already have."

"A wise answer," the ghost acknowledged.

"So," Danny said, walking over to his friends. "Let's go home." He yawned, then added. "I'm tired, and I really just want to go to sleep."

And, with that, Danny phased through the Specter Speeder before collapsing on the seat, sinking into his human mode and unconsciousness.

* * *

And there you have it! My wonderful, amazing climax complete!

You know, lots of people seem to complain about being bad at writing action scenes… But when you get into it, it really is a lot of fun!

So, I _reeeeeally_ want to know what you all think of this. And the previous chapter, of course. I think I'm pretty much starved for reviews, heheh.

I'd like to be able to say when I'll have the epilogue up, I really would, but I can't. I'm going to Magic Mountain tomorrow (Yay!) and I'm spending the day after working on Rose Parade Floats with my church youth group. Fun!

So, I guess I'll see you all next year! (as in, probably a few days from now, heh)

See ya!  
-E.P.


	15. Epilogue: Recovery

Wow, the final installment? Already? Well, this being the last chapter I'll ever write for 'The Sleeping Sickness', I think I'll put all of my final notes at the bottom.

Final Disclaimer: Same as the first one. Nothing's changed; not that you would expect it, huh?

* * *

Epilogue: Recovery

* * *

It was six o'clock ante meridian that Friday morning when Danny's alarm clock decided to ring.

Danny Fenton woke up, black hair as messy as ever, inwardly complaining that he had woken so early, but still knowing how close he had come in the past few days to not waking up at all.

Assuming that Jazz or someone had moved him upstairs, Danny proceeded to prepare for school, then submitted himself to several temperature-takings and many repeats of, "Are you sure you feel better?" from his mom, while listening to the complaints of his father that "The darn Wisconsin ghost got away again!"

Danny smiled and glanced over at Vlad at that. "I'm sure we'll get him next time," Danny said, carefully directing every syllable towards the millionaire.

School was, as usual, quite the ordeal. Dash had apparently thought that Danny's absence was simply an excuse to stuff Danny in his locker more often throughout the day.

"Not even lunch, and he's already got me... What, four, five times now?" Danny muttered, phasing through his locker so as not to be late to his science class, rubbing his shoulder. Griffin, the Box Ghost, Mortis, and most recently, Dash had all managed to jar his left shoulder painfully throughout the course of a single week.

But there was more of an ordeal to school than a jock's bullying. Danny had finished almost none of his homework, so he was already subdued when he plodded into science.

"Good morning, class. Today is the day you've all be waiting for... The biology test!" The class groaned simultaneously. Mr. Murray paused dramatically before continuing. "Don't worry, it's only worth twenty percent of your final grade!"

Danny thumped his head down on the desk; he hadn't studied once!

He was to be surprised, though. At the end of the class, once the tests had been completed and graded (they were graded in the 'classmates grade each other's papers' fashion), Danny looked apprehensively at the face down paper on his desk.

_Do I really want to torture myself?_

Finally, the suspense became too much, and Danny anxiously turned the paper over.

Forty-four out of fifty? Danny didn't need to be a math genius to know that was eighty-eight percent. He had passed with a B, and if he was not mistaken, that grade had brought his entire class average up to a C-minus.

Danny couldn't help but smiling as he handed the paper in on the way out to lunch. Finally, ghost fighting had paid off! Perhaps it was Jazz, who had narrated much of the process of creating the cure. Or perhaps it was the fact that Danny had spent more than his fair share of time looking at his notes in the attempt to decipher the ghostly language.

Feeling very satisfied with himself, Danny hurried to meet Tucker and Sam in the lunchroom, even ducking under a very startled Dash to successfully avoid another unscheduled meeting with the inside of a locker.

* * *

Danny walked home, oddly unaccompanied by either of his two friends, to find Vlad sitting in his living room.

Danny sighed; if he wanted Vlad to leave, it looked like he needed to take matters into his own hands.

"Hello, Vladimir," Danny said, mimicking the elder halfa's irritating habit of using full names.

"Why, good afternoon, Daniel," he replied menacingly.

"...And goodbye, Vladimir," Danny continued, pointing meaningfully out the door.

"You want me to leave?" Danny nodded. "Oh, but I had so much fun here..." Vlad falsely pouted.

"What part of 'leave my house now' do you not understand, Plasmius?" Danny asked angrily.

"Your house? I was under the impression that this house was owned by your idiot father."

Danny flinched as his ghost sense was triggered. Then he grinned as he saw the purple form of Griffin phase through the wall just behind Vlad.

"You might want to leave now," Danny said, still grinning.

"You know, I don't think I will."

"_ROOOOOOAAAARRRR!_"

Vlad leapt up and turned around so fast he knocked the chair he had been sitting on over. When he saw the griffin, he relaxed.

"Oh, please, Daniel. You don't think I can't defeat that oversized feather duster as easily as I can defeat you, do you?" Vlad transformed into Plasmius, preparing to fire an ectoblast at the Griffin.

At that moment, the arrival of Jack and Maddie Fenton was hailed by the deep shout of, "Ghost!"

The jumpsuited parents arrived upon the scene, taking in Plasmius with a lit-up hand, standing next to their son, Griffin having cleverly made herself invisible.

"Ah, now, um, what was that you were saying about my so-called 'idiot father', ghost?" Danny asked, trying his best to keep from laughing while looking afraid at the same time.

"Jack Fenton is not an idiot!" the father in question boomed, hefting a bazooka aimed in the general direction of Vlad.

"Prepare to die again, you odd manifestation of ectoplasmic energy and post-human consciousness!" Maddie added.

Danny dropped his voice so only Vlad could hear. "You know, I think you have less than five seconds this time."

"Well, aren't you the clever one, Daniel. I'll get you next time, Danny Pha-er, Fenton."

And with that, Vlad vanished in a puff of ectoplasmic smoke, Danny looking smugly at the place where he had previously been.

"He got away," Jack said disappointedly, lowering the bazooka and hanging his head.

"Quick, Jack!" Maddie cried, flying out the door. "We might still be able to catch him!"

Danny blinked in bewilderment. "Did Vlad just call me Danny?"

Griffin nudged him with her beak, interrupting Danny's bewildered rhetorical question.

"What?" he asked, turning to her. She motioned with her head, stamping her feet. Finally she ran to the window, and ran back to Danny.

"...You want me to follow you?" he asked. Griffin closed her eyes in satisfaction and bobbled her head up and down.

"Okay..." Danny said. He transformed to his ghost half and followed the griffin through the wall.

* * *

Danny trailed Griffin to the park, where he had first encountered her the previous Friday. He followed her through the park, wondering where she was going, until she finally stopped beside a tree that looked as if it had recently been set aflame.

Griffin began digging at the base of an oddly familiar oak tree opposite of the charred one.

Looking likely to uproot it, Danny pulled the bird away. Glancing at a space made between two roots, Danny saw something black and shiny in the churned soil.

Picking it up, Danny found that it was a black pen lid. And, next to it, something that looked oddly like that gray lid Danny had come across nearly a week previously. Unearthing the object with a simple display of intangibility, Danny found that it was a lidless gray box, lined with red velvet, and containing a solitary black pen.

Danny looked the two objects over, putting two and two together in his head.

The one place no one would look for a ghostly pen: buried under an oak tree in the middle of Amity Park's park! Danny assumed that the lid he had found was the lid to the box (it looked about the same size) and that the pen had originally come from the box. Griffin, having formerly worked for Mortimer, had been looking for it, and had taken it with her the Friday Danny had fought her so long ago.

Danny turned to the griffin in question and patted her beak fondly, still looking thoughtfully at the items in his hands. It could be partially considered his fault that the Sleeping Sickness had been unleashed, if that were the case. But he simply shook his head and placed the lid, box, and pen inside his purple backpack. He smiled at Griffin.

"You'd better go on home," he said, and the ghost flew off with a loud and happy squawk. Danny turned to follow.

"Hey, um, D-Danny?"

The ghost boy turned back to the person who had hailed him. It was the blonde, hazel-eyed boy he had seen in the park, Michael.

"Yes?" Danny asked, puzzled.

"Was that your bird?" the boy asked.

"Well... she's a griffin." Seeing the boy's fearful look, Danny remembered the incident in which he had saved him a week ago. "Griffin's actually pretty nice when you get to know her. Last Friday, she was just...not feeling well."

"Was she sick?" Michael asked.

"Well...you might say that," Danny said, surprised at how close to the truth the child had come. "Actually, yes, she was. So, uh, did you want something?"

Michael seemed to remember why he was there. "Y-yes!" he stammered, holding out a large notebook he had been carrying. "I was wondering if... if I could have your autograph."

"_What?_" Danny asked, incredibly taken aback.

"Well, if you don't want to, I'd understand..." the boy said quietly, looking crestfallen. Danny smiled and knelt down to the child's level. He took the proffered pen and notebook, paused, then signed.

"Here," he said, handing the notebook and pen back to the boy.

"Thanks!" Michael said happily. He looked over his shoulder. Danny followed the boy's gaze, to see his mother and sister waving from the playground.

"We come to play in the park every Friday afternoon," Michael explained.

"I see," Danny replied. He glanced up towards the sky. "Well, I'd probably better be going home. See you around, Michael. And, um, tell Serena and your mom hi for me."

"Bye-bye, Danny!" the boy waved. The halfa turned to wave back, before speeding off into the evening. Behind him, Michael looked down at the autographed paper.

Danny Phantom had signed his name in bright green ink.

* * *

Whew, that's it! Longer that I had originally intended, or expected, but it's better that way, don't you think?

So, the epilogue... I really don't have any notes to make concerning this. It's the conclusion, so hopefully it answered all of your questions... And if it didn't, now would probably be a good time to ask. I left a little bit of that open there, though, for a sequel I've been considering writing.

So... An incredible review count here, absolutely incredible. Fifty-one people managed to supply nearly one hundred and fifty reviews… Thanks! At times I've felt overwhelmed from all the praise. But where would I be without my beloved reviewers?

And to all of you anonymous people out there, who have been lurking around here, just reading... Thanks for reading, and I hope you've enjoyed it!

So... Now that this story is over, I've got five words for ya. 'The Halfa That Time Forgot'. I'm going to wait a little while before I begin with that, though... I've been neglecting my other stories lately, and I think I'm well overdue for a couple of updates on HF and TPATP. Besides, my rough drafts for the first three chapters of THTTFare currently in another state.

And, yes, as mentioned before, I do have a sequel planned for the future! As it stands, it's only slightly plotted out, and more of an idea than anything... But it'll be there eventually. I'm kinda burned out on the whole sickness idea right now, and I need a bit of a break. You can understand that, can't you? But here's the deal on the sequel:

_**The Second Strain  
**Mortimer had, unbeknownst to the Ancient Council, created two strains of the dangerous disease. Danny had found it, but it things don't stay locked away for long... But this time, the lives of Danny's friends and family are threatened! And who is the sorcerer's apprentice, the mysterious AF?_

Exciting, no? But, let's see... I've got several other stories to go before that comes around. I

might start it sooner, if I'm so inclined, but for right now, that's how it stands.

Thanks again, everyone! I think I've had as much fun writing this as you guys've had reading.

Happy New Year, everyone!  
-E.P.


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